SOME NEW OLD PICTURES

The other day my distant cousin Kimberly Gautreau received a mixed bunch of tintypes and photographs. Unfortunately there were no names on them, so Kimberly asked me to take a look at
some she had posted on her Facebook page. There was one I recognized right away as being a picture
of my 3x great grandfather John Cutter West, and another that I am pretty sure is Arvilla(Ames) West,
John's wife. I already had pictures of them both from my Aunt Dorothy that I could compare with the ones Kimberly had.

Here's the picture I already had of John:

And here's the one Kimberly has:

This is the picture of Arvilla I already had:

And here's the new one that I believe is her:

Looking at the two, I see similarities in the nose, mouth and forehead, but especially the droop in her left eye. Or am I imagining things?

I was unable to help Kimberly identify the rest of the pictures which probably are members of the family of Abel Gage Marston and his wife (my 2x great grandaunt)Ann Matilda West, who was John and Arvilla's oldest daughter.

Thank you Kimberly for letting me share these on my blog!

DIPHTHERIA

Today marks the end of a horrific period in my family's history. On this date in 1862 thelast of three children and two grandchildren of John Cutter West and Arvilla (Ames)  died during a diphtheria outbreak in  Letter B Plantation in Oxford County Maine. It started with the death of their daughter in law Orpha Viette Reynolds West who died on New Year’s Eve, Dec. 31st, 1861. She was 19 years old, and she was the first wife of my 2x great grandfather Jonathan Phelps West. They'd been married two months.

Then Jonathan and Arvilla's younger children began to die:


David Pingree West died on Jan. 17th , 1862. He was eight years old, the youngest of the
eleven children, and was mentally handicapped.

Ruth Ellen West died on Jan. 26th. She was ten.

16 year old Arvilla Electa West died on Feb. 6th.

Older brother Asa Atwood West had married and started his own family on his
farm in neighboring Andover, Maine. He lost two children to the outbreak:

8 year old Arvilla died on Feb. 18th.

2 year old Anna Pearl on Feb. 20th.

I don't know if the rest of the older sons and daughters came down with diphtheria as
well, but if they did they recovered because they all lived into the 20th century. Jonathan
Phelps West remarried which is why I am here telling this story. John Cutter West died on
July 24 1862 at age 60. Whether his death was caused by poor health after diphtheria
I do not know.

Emil Behring discovered a vaccine for diphtheria in 1913.

And every time I read an argument against childhood vaccination shots, I think of my 3x
great grandmother Arvilla West, and how grateful she'd have been for something that
might have saved her children and grandchildren.

AN EARLY AUTUMN WEDDING

On 23Sep 1827 John Cutter West married Arvilla Ames in Sumner, Maine.
We don't know much about John's background before that day. He's THE
brick wall in our  family, the Elusive John C.  We know he was about 25
years old at the time of the marriage, and that's all up until then. The
marriage record doesn't include the names of the parents of the bride and
groom. Luckily, we do know a lot about Arvilla and her family family. She
was born on 25Jan 1810 in Livermore Maine so she was 17 years old when
she married John.  Her parents were Jonatham Phelps Ames and Polly Griffith
(Griffeth) and she was one of eight children. 

John and  Arvilla's first child, Ann Matilda was born the following June. She was
the first of  ten children, but not all lived to adulthood.  One son, 18 year old
John, died on Christmas Day in 1850. Three more children and three grandchildren
died in the diptheria epidemic of 1862, as did their daugkter in law, Orpha.
And that same year saw John Cutter West's own death after nearly thirty five
years of marriage.

Arvilla survived another forty five years, passing away in 1907.
She never remarried.

John and Arvilla don't have as many descendants compared to my Ellingwood
and Barker ancestors but today they are spread across the continent, from
New England and the Carolinas, to Ohio, Minnesota and Illinois, and to
Washington in the Pacific Northwest. The newest member of the family
will be born sometime soon to a descendant of their son Leonidas.

And it all started on an early Autumn day 184 years ago in Sumner,
Maine.

CAPTION CORRECTIONS

I've made two mistakes in my recent postings of pictures that I need to
correct and they actually involve the same people.

In the last post I mistakenly identified this group of people as being
Louisa  A Richardson West, Jonathan Phelps West and an unknown
woman in the front, and the two people in the back as one of Jonathan
and Louisa's sons and his wife. Today I printed out the list of photos
cousin Lewis included on the cds and discovered my mistake.

The lady on the left is actually my 3x greatgrandmother Arvilla S Ames West.
On the far right is her granddaughter, my 2x greatgrandaunt Clarinda(Clara) Britten
West, and the man sitting in between them is Clarinda's husband Charles Godwin.
The other two adults in the back and the child on Charles' lap are unidentified.
Charles and Clarinda had three daughters so it's possible that is one of them with
her husband and the child is theirs, So this might very well be a picture of four
generations of Arvilla's family.


I was right about one thing in the next picture. It's the same outfit being worn
but it's Arvilla wearing it, not Louisa. And it's a Godwin Family Reunion, not
one for the West family. The earlier picture with Arvilla might even have been
taken on the same occasion!

Arvilla Ames West was born in 1810 and died in 1907. She would have known
her grandfather John Ames the Revolutionary War veteran and she knew her
great grandson, Floyd Earl West Sr. So by knowing our grandfather all the
West grandchildren knew someone who knew someone who fought in the
Revolution!

Now that I printed out that list from Lewis, hopefully I won't make too many
more mistakes with these wonderful pictures.

I NEED TO POST THIS BEFORE I GO OUT AND DISAPPEAR INTO A SNOWDRIFT OR SOMETHING!

Last week my sister Cheryl sent me three links she found googling
"John Cutter West" and asked me if I'd seen them before,which I had.
But it had been some time since the last time I'd checked them so I
took a look again. The first two were posts on forums from several
years back that have not had any recent responses. The third is
a Griffith family genealogy website created by Richard Griffith.

Now John Cutter West's wife Arvilla Ames was the daughter of
Jonathan Phelps Ames and Polly Griffith/Griffeth.When I'd visited
Richard's site before I was primarily interested in my direct ancestors
and hadn't as yet widened my research to include their siblings and
cousins. This time I looked at the Index of Names, and there under West
I saw "Josiah (b.10 May 1734, d.16Feb 1803)". I clicked on it and found
that Josiah West had married Elizabeth Griffith in Plymouth, Plymouth
Co., Ma, on 28Nov 1755. Elizabeth was the daughter of Jesse Griffith
and Elizabeth Bent and a third or fourth cousin of Polly Griffith.

A while back when I'd discussed my John Cutter West brickwall here,
Randy Seaver did some searching and came up with Josiah West as
possibly being of the right generation to be JC's grandfather. I hadn't
been able to find much about him and somehow or another I'd missed
the fact his wife was a Griffith. The biggest question is did any of his
children migrate to Maine? So far I've found his son Josiah Jr. moving
to N.Y. But there seems to be more evidence that Josiah West MIGHT
be John Cutter West's grandfather, or that he MIGHT have had a
relative who was.

At least it's a lead!

LEVI AMES

He began his life of crime at age 7 when he stole eggs from a neighbor. It
ended at age 21 in 1773 for the crime of burglary. There were "broadsides"
published with his life story and dying declarations, meant to entertain as
well as warn about the consequences of a sinful life.

His name was Levi Ames, (or Eames) and I believe he is another of my
Ames relations. My Ames branch(I'm descended from Arvilla Ames, who
married my 3x great grandfather John Cutter West)is one of the more
colorful ones, with my ancestress Rebecca Blake Eames accused of being
a witch and cousins Jonathan Ames and Elizabeth Blunt Ames accused of
of murder. I first ran across his story in D. Brenton Simons' "Witches,
Rakes, and Rogues" (Boston, Commonwealth Editions, 2005) but at the
time I was awash in a lot of new genealogical information so I put off
exploring it until now.

I don't intend to relate the entire sad history of Levi Ames here. You should
really buy a copy of the book which is now available in paperback. It's a great
book for anyone interested in colonial era history and it contains the complete
text of Levi's life story as he purportedly narrated it to his jailer. The events
surrounding the trial itself took on the atmosphere of similar in some respects
to modern day show trials. Between the time of his conviction and the day of
execution on 21 Oct 1773, Levi repented for his life of sin and turned to religion
and became the center of quite a bit of activity. Mr. Simons tells how on Oct 19
a minister and a large crowd gathered outside the jailhouse to serenade the
prisoner with an "execution hymn." He also mentions three Boston ministers,
Samuel Mather, Andrew Eliot, and Samuel Stillman who gave "execution sermons"
during the period.(p.166) (Stillman was with Levi on the morning of the hanging
which has significance in later events.)

That afternoon Levi Ames was taken to the appropriately named execution site,
Boston Neck, where the sentence pronounced by Chief Justice Peter Oliver was
carried out: he was hung by the neck until he was "...dead! Dead! Dead!" Before
he died, Levi asked that no shame be put on his mother or brother because of his
deeds, and then delivered his "Dying Speech" that was published as the "Dying
Penitent". At least one generation of New England schoolchildren read it as part
of their studies.

But the case of Levi Ames was not quite over. His soul might have been saved,
but his now empty mortal shell was still in jeopardy.

We'll discuss that in the next post.

WITNESS TO HISTORY

My three times great grandmother Arvilla Ames West was
born on 26 Jan 1810 in Livermore, Oxford County, Maine
and died on 25 April 1907 in Hermon, Oxford Maine at the
age of 97. During the course of that long life much occurred
and much changed in the American way of life.


There were 4 wars in her lifetime: The War of 1812, The
Mexican-American War, the Civil War, the Spanish-American
War. She lived through the terms of 23 presidents. James
Madison was in office when she was born, and Theodore
Roosevelt was in office when she died. Three Presidents,
Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley were assassinated, and
Andrew Jackson survived an attempted assassination.


There were 17 states when Arvilla was born. There were 45
before she died. A few months after her death, the 46th,
Oklahoma, joined the Union. She would have known her
grandfathers, Revolutionary War veterans John Ames and
John Griffeth and possibly others who'd taken part in the
founding of our nation.


Arvilla struggled with the rest of the nation through five
financial panics that occurred in the years 1819, 1837, 1857,
1873, 1893, and died while the nation was in the throes of
the panic of 1907.



Americans either invented or perfected such marvels as
the telegraph, the telephone, the phonograph, the elevator,
motion pictures and the electric light bulb. Houses went from
using oil lamps to using electricity for lighting.


People went from traveling by horses to railroads to
"horseless carriages" and the first airplane was flown by
the Wright brothers.


Arvilla gave birth to 10 children and had over 30 grandchildren
and many great grandchildren. She outlived 4 of her children
and 4 of her great grandchildren.


We today talk about how quickly our world changes because
of the advances in science and technology. But we have been
born into an age of technology and we are used to new
discoveries happening nearly everyday.


Our ancestors, people like Arvilla Ames, were born at the end
of the previous age. For them, their whole world changed at
a much more drastic way than ours does, mostly for the
better but in some cases for the worse.


What an lifetime of miracles it must have seemed to Arvilla
Ames!


Written for the 52nd edition of the Carnival of Genealogy

PING AND I VISIT THE FAMILY HISTORY CENTER

So today was my first trip to a Family History Center.


Last night I did some research on the Family Search website
and found some microfilm records and cd rom file numbers
which I wrote down in a small notebook. I then printed up
some of my pedigree chart in a five generation /page landscape
format to go along with the older six generation/page version.
I only printed out fifteen pages of each because the full report
is over three hundred pages.


When I went to add them to the three-ringed binder I use for
my family group sheets I found there wasn’t enough space, so
I slid them into the pocket inside the front cover of the
notebook. Note to self: buy a few more binders. Or at least
start using the one of the very large ones.


Next, I checked my flashdrive, backed up any new files from
my desktop to it and deleted some older ones that were
replaced by updated versions.


Finally, I Googlemapped the Family History Center address
at 379 Gardner St. in Hingham from my home here in
Abington. When I saw the suggested route and the map, I
shook my head. I’d expected the FHC to be in the older part
of Hingham closer to the coast but instead found it was much
closer. The map suggested a route that would take me north
on Route 18 and then by a series of turns to Derby St in
Hingham where the far end of Gardner St joins it, a trip of
7.9 miles and about(it said) sixteen minutes. Except that
anyone who lives in this area knows how congested Route 18
is at certain times of day and also knows how many traffic
lights that route entails. I looked at the map and figured out
a much quicker, shorter route using the back roads I know
which would take me to Gardner St on its southern end
where it joins Pond St


Of course, that all depended on whether Ping would behave.
Ping is the name I’ve finally given to my 1992 Ford Taurus
that I just spent $1800 dollars repairing and comes from its
new annoying habit.


You know how your car chimes if the door is open or you
leave the keys in the ignition or your seatbelt is unbuckled?
Recently, the car has given that sound when I first start it up
and then continues non-stop until I reach my destination
and turn the car off. Talk about a ringing in my ears! It also
stalled out once on the way to work after I got it back which
was more what I was worried about for this trip.


This morning I got up later than I planned because my post
nasal drip acted up and it took awhile to fall asleep. Eventually
I gathered all my things(flashdrive, notebook, binder, three
pens) together and got in the car. It was (and still is) a
beautiful day outside and it is definitely a day to drive with
your car window down. Ping behaved herself and there was
no bell so I was relieved that as I drove I wouldn’t have kids
run out to the curbside thinking my car was the approaching
ice cream vendor. I turned on the radio and three commercials
and two Neil Diamond songs later(“Cherry, Cherry” and
“Sweet Caroline”) I pulled into the driveway of the FHC. It’s
in the rear of a LDS church in a quiet residential area that I
had driven by in the past over the years without paying
attention to the sign!



I found the entrance, went inside, and a very nice woman
volunteer was there along with another woman viewing
records at one of the microfilm machines. There were about
six of these spaced around the walls of the room and at least
two computers, one of which was being used by the volunteer.
I explained I was new and asked if I could see what films
and fiches they had there, as Miriam had suggested in
her comment to my earlier post. We checked some of the
film numbers I’d written down but didn’t have any luck,
and apparently the Plymouth records were in use already,
so I took a reel for the vital records of Livermore, Me. instead.
John Cutter West’s wife Arvilla Ames had been born there;
perhaps they filed marriage intentions there as well as in
nearby Sumner where they married in 1827?


The volunteer showed me how to load the microfilm on the
machine and I spent the next hour or so looking at the
images but didn’t find a mention of the marriage. By the time
I was done it was 12:30 and the room was closing at 1pm,
so there was little point in loading up a new film. I rewound
the microfilm, turned off the machine and returned the film
to its drawer in the cabinet. I thanked the volunteer for her
help and told her I’d be back next week at an earlier time
and then left. On the way home I picked up a burger, and
one Elvis Presley and one Doors song later(“Suspicious Minds”
, “Light My Fire”) I was home.


So, while I hadn’t learned anything new about John Cutter
West(and I hadn’t expected to right away anyway!) I did
acquaint myself with how to get to the FHC, what resources
and equipment they had available and with their changed
hours.(The Family Search site said it closed at 2pm but they
now close an hour earlier at 1pm.) When I go back next week
I’ll explore a bit further and perhaps order a roll of microfilm
from the Family History Library. All in all, a good few hours
out of the apartment and I look forward to more visits to
the FHC.


And that concludes Bill and Ping’s Excellent Adventure!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ARVILLA!

I have some ancestors' birthdays and anniversaries coming
up over the next few days, starting with today, which is the
198th birthday of my 3x great grandmother Arvilla Ames
West.

Arvilla was born in 1810 in Oxford County, Me. and died
25 Apr 1907 in Hermon, Oxford, Me. and was 97 year old
when she passed. In her life, she lived through some
very interesting times:Maine becoming a state, the
Mexican-American War, the Civil War, the diptheria
epeidemic that claimed children and grandchildren,
the Industrial Revolution, and the Spanish-American War
to name just the ones I can think of as I type this, plus the
unions of the West family with the Richardson and
Ellingwood in my line and other s through the marriages of
her other children and grandchildren. That's why she was
one of my choices for the "dinner with four ancestors"
post for the CoG.

Boy, I wish I knew if she'd kept a journal or wrote letters.
Can you imagine what a treasure trove of family history
and genealogy information that would be?

BEDTIME GENEALOGY 21

I intended to do a post on the Great Molasses Flood but the
MassMoments website beat me to it and did a much better job
of it than I would have. I will say, though, that I’ve met Stephen
Puleo, the author of the book Dark Tide: The Great Molasses
Flood of 1919. My bookstore hosted one of the first signings for
the book and I highly recommend the book. My mother was
born eight years after the Molasses Flood and lived in a different
district of Boston, but often said that on a hot day you could smell
molasses if you were anywhere near the North End.


Today, January 16th, is the 174th birthday of my great-great
grandfather Jonathan Phelps West who I’ve written about before
in the story of his first marriage to Orpha. I was thinking about
this earlier tonight and realized that Pop, Grandpa West, would
have known his great grandmother Arvilla Ames West, Jonathan
P.’s mother, who lived from 1810 until 1907. I wonder if she ever
told him about her parents and grandparents who were born in
the century before!


Last but not least, congratulations to Randy, Chris, Jasia, Blaine,
Sally, and J.D. for making Kimberly Powell’s “Top Ten Blog List”
and to Terry, Craig, Miriam, Tim, Tim, Denise and Shelly for
being also mentioned by Kimberly as among her favorites. All
of them are terrific writers and if you haven’t read their blogs
yet, follow the links above to catch up with them now!

ARVILLA AMES FAMILY BIBLE 2

The image above is of the Deaths page from the Family Records
section of the Arvilla Ames West bible. I’m posting this page

because it’s the most easily readable one of the four records

pages and because it also shows the change of handwriting in

the entries.

So I have these images with important family genealogy

information on them from a family bible. How do I cite this

source?

In her “Evidence: Citation and Analysis for the Family

Historian” (1) , Elizabeth Shown Mills gives some criteria to

establish the credibility of information recorded in a family bible.

Paraphrasing her, they include:

What is the bible’s publication date, and does it match the date

of the first event recorded, or has someone entered events that
occurred before the bible was published?

The bible was published in 1859, and while there are earlier
events recorded, they are the birth dates of the owner, Arvilla

Ames West and her husband, John Cutter West and their

children. This would be logical for a wife to make in

recording her family’s history in a newly aquired bible.

Are the ink and handwriting for entries the same throughout,
which would indicate that they were all entered at the same

time, or are the entries made with different style or quality of

handwriting (which would mean they might have been written

by several writers or by one over the course of their lifetime)?

As the image above shows, entries were made by more than one
person, starting about 1900. Arvilla Ames West was 90 years old
then and the entry for Clarinda B.(ritton)Goodwin’s death in

1900 is in a different hand than the previous entries.

Since I haven’t seen the actual pages I can’t comment on the ink
used on the entries. But I had no doubt as to the authenticity of
the bible to begin with. I wanted to show how it can be proven
to someone else.

So, how to cite the source?
Back to Evidence! The example given is for a Family Bible
with provenance (p65) but while I know it was Arvilla’s
in 1859 and I know who had it before they passed it on to
Aunt Dot, there is still a question on who had it in between
the two. I think it was Arvilla’s eldest daughter, Ann Matilda
West Marston, but I need to confirm that. So, without

provenance, my citation for the above image would be (I think):

Image File “Arvilla Ames West Bible Deaths" scanned

1/10/2008 by William West from a photoimage provided by

Dorothy____ in December 2007 of the Arvilla Ames West

Bible, “The New Testament of Our Lord and Savior Jesus

Christ” (New York: American Bible Society, 1859) original

owned in 2007 by Dorothy ___. Image has been retouched by

West but he attests that no information has been altered.”

Phew! That’s a mouthful, isn’t it? I left my Aunt’s last name
blank here for reasons of her privacy. And when I have the exact
provenance established I’ll post an update.

Of course, since it’s a bible it would have to be divine provenance!

(1)
Elizabeth Shown Mills, Evidence! Citation & Analysis for the
Family Historian , 17th printing (Baltimore: Genealogical

Publishing Company, 2007) p.54

THE ARVILLA AMES WEST BIBLE

One of the items my Aunt Dorothy sent me recently is a set of
photocopied pages from the bible that belonged to Arvilla Ames,
our ancestress and the wife of John Cutter West. It previously
belonged to another of their descendants who gave it to my
Aunt and the images she gave me are of the “Family Record”
section of the book.



The first two images above seem to be the inside front and back
covers of the bible. On the front inner cover is written
“Arvilla Ames West, Upton, Me Oxford Co. 1859”


On the inside back cover, the name Arvilla West is written in
two different styles with the second version being the better of
the pair. The first seems closer to the inscription in the front. Perhaps
someone else wrote the sample on the right for Arvilla to copy in
her own hand on the left?


The third image is of the title page of the bible and gives the
date of publication as 1859, which would confirm the date
given in the inscription.


When I first read the recorded family information I noticed that
it has the same entries as the transcription of another family
bible but there are additional entries to the Births and Deaths
pages for members of the family of the relative who had the bible
before my Aunt. I also noticed that the handwriting seems to be of
two or perhaps as many as four different people and may indicate
when the bible had a new owner.



Next post I’ll discuss how I should cite this.

SYNCHRONICITY

I’ve been searching the web for information on the men who are
mentioned on the Ames petition and ran into one of those cases
of synchronicity that makes genealogy fun.

Many of the early settlers of Norridgewock, Maine came from
Groton, Mass. I found some lists and besides the names I was
looking for I found John Laughton. Now I have three John
Laughtons among my ancestors, and a quick look at their sheets
told me that the John Laughton on the list was the first of them,
who is my 6x great grandfather. His great great granddaughter
Louisa Almata Richardson married Jonathan Phelps West.
His mother was Arvilla Ames.


I know it’s not all that uncommon for these coincidences to pop
up given the size of the population in Maine in that era but still
it tickles me to think John Laughton and John Ames might have
known each other.


What would they have thought if they knew their descendants
would marry?

Gee, I hope they liked each other!

A FINE WEDDING

My nephew Paul was married today and it was a nice wedding.
He was handsome and his bride Jen was radiant and they are
both such good young people.


Man, does that ever make me feel old, looking at that.


I rode down to the reception with my brother and his two sons
and along the way I explained about the family tree. By the
time I was done, my youngest nephew Matt complained his head
hurt!


There was a little mixup with the table seatings but we ended up
where we were supposed to be with a table with my two aunts.
Aunt Emily from my mother’s side came with her daughter
Winnie and Winnie’s husband David. From my father’s side there
was his sister, my Aunt Dorothy, and cousin Louise her daughter.
My mom’s friend Joe B. who was as close as a grandfather to
Cheryl’s kids was also there with us along with the minister who
had performed the ceremony.




I’d brought along photocopies of my Grandfather West’s WWI
draft card and John Ames’ Revolutionary War pension files for
Aunt Dot. I also brought copies of great Grandfather White’s
WWI draft card, the cards for the McFarland brothers, some
census pages and other information on that side of the family
for Emily and Winnie.



And it turned out Aunt Dot had the same idea. She brought a
folder with pictures of Grandfather and Great Grandfather West
and pictures of Great Grandmother Lottie Barker and her four
sisters. There was also a copy of Grandfather West’s WWI
discharge papers from the Army and a copy of a certified abstract
of the marriage of Arvilla Ames' and John C (Cutter) West’s
marriage record.


But the best of all are the thirteen handwritten pages entitled
“Memories” that are Dot’s reminisces of her and Dad’s childhood
in Maine. I will be posting most of it here over the course of the
next week or so.



We had a good time talking about family history and genealogy.
I even learned a few new things about Grandfather White that I
hadn’t known concerning the reason Aggie divorced him.

I guess the minister learned more about our family than he
expected!

All in all, a beautiful day.

The sun shone on us all.

THE ELUSIVE JOHN C.

You might have noticed that many of my blog posts deal with
ancestors with surnames such as (E)Ames or Ellingwood/
Ellinwood/Ellenwood or Abbot(t) on my fathers side of the family
more than on my own surname of West. The reason is simple and
quite common among many genealogists: I have a brick wall.


The furthest back I can go in my direct West line is to John Cutter
West who is believed to have been born in Plymouth Ma. on 8 Oct
1802 but neither I or others before me doing the family genealogy
have been able to discover any record of his birth as of yet. This is
why I like to refer to him as the Elusive John C.


There are any number of reasons why this is the case. One is that
it was an error by the census taker; an incorrect date, birthplace,
or he misunderstood the information and the middle name was
not Cutter but something else. There was a Cottle family, for
example, that was involved with the Wests descended from the
line of Francis West of Duxbury, Ma. Another possibility is that he
was not born in the town Plymouth but in Plymouth County.


There are other ways that the information on the Elusive John C.
could be wrong and I'll explore them further in other posts.


John and his descendants for the most part don’t seem to have
been all that big on writing so I’ve not found anything written by
them. There’s not much else on them that I’ve been able to find
so far outside of something written about a man I believe to be
Jonathan Phelps West, my great great grandfather. But even as
frustrating as it might seem I was lucky enough to have material
to start with and even a picture. I think. That fellow up there at
the top right of the screen is supposedly the Elusive John C.
himself.


Of course the problem with having a name like West is that it’s
such a common name and any browser search on “John West”
yields a lot of hits. I just checked it on Google and I got 859,000
on just the name without adding other words to the search. “John
Cutter West” yields 9...mostly posts from this blog or queries I
sent to forums. “John C. West” gets 15,500 references.


Still, I keep looking for the Elusive John C. I’ve found a few things
here and there, and meanwhile I also research the families of
women the West men married: Arvilla Ames, Louisa Richardson,
Clara Ellingwood, and Cora Barker. Maybe I’ll stumble across a
lead on John C. while exploring those other leads but even if I
don’t I’m enjoying the hunt. I’m finding out fascinating things
about relatives I didn’t even know anything about before.


That’s the joy of genealogy

GENEALOGY DIGGING

Sundays are days when I get to spend a bit more
time on the genealogy hunt.

I’ve been backtracking a bit and adding names of siblings
of my direct ancestors to family sheets. Up until now I’d
had much of the information on paper but not in the
computer but there are also some lines where I had none
entered at all, such as the Ellingwood and Abbott siblings.
I’m hoping that by filling in those blanks it might help in
the search for the parents of my brick wall, John Cutter
West.


One of the things I’ve discovered is how many men in
my family have worked as blacksmiths or wheelwrights.
For example, John Cutter West listed his occupation on
the 1850 Oxford County Maine Federal Census as being
a blacksmith. His wife Arvilla Ames was a granddaughter
of John Ames, also a blacksmith. Could John and Arvilla
have met through that occupational connection?


On another subject I found some information which shows
the other side of events mentioned in my recent posts about
Essex County settlers in Canada and it involves one of my
Abbot(t) ancestors. I’ll be posting more on that later.


Back to the family sheets.

SO WHAT DO I KNOW?

Alright, I'm faced with some roadblocks on both my maternal and paternal lines. My mother was a White and her father walked out on the small family during the Great Depression. My mother and uncle never talked about their father around me and when they did it was very little and usually preceded by a few choice terms I won't repeat here. Both my parents and my uncle are deceased now so that avenue of questioning is closed to me.

And on her mother's side we can only go back one more generation to the McFarlands who came over from Ireland.

My father was a West and while my Aunt Dorothy (and others) have traced the line back to John Cutter West on the 1837 Maine Census, none of us who've climbed that family tree have been able to find his parents or a record of his supposed birth in Plymouth, Ma. in 1802. It's through his marriage to Arvilla Ames that I can trace my descent from many early Ma. colonists. And his grandson, Philip Jonathan(my great grandfather) married Clara Ford Ellingwood who is another link to the early settlers.

Besides my aunt's earlier research I have a copy of a book on the history of Wilson's Mills, Maine and a book on the Dunham and Ellingwood families (more on these later.) I have a copy of the marriage certificate and divorce decree of my mother's parents. I also have a copy of the 1880 census with my mother's grandparents the McFarlands and their children alive at that time listed on it.

I've two letters from relatives on each side of the family with information on births, deaths, and marriages.

So while I have some brickwalls I also have more information than many others have when they started up.

When I began my genealogy work I used an older computer
jokingly known as George but recently he has been replaced
by Elaine, a Christmas gift from some of the best friends I could
have ever have. And my sister and her family gave me a nifty
printer/scanner/fax machine which I've named Newman. These
make things much easier and I can't thank them all enough for it.

I also have a secondhand laptop I call Kramer which is the backup
now.

And there it is. What I have information wise and what tools I have to work with while climbing my family tree. .