This past week my two granddaughters enjoyed great success on the basketball ball court. It's also March Madness when basketball fever becomes part of the conversation and new basketball legends are created. While they're still a wee bit young our son's and wife's daughters aspire to be no exception! As it happens, our granddaughters (along with any other descendants of their great-great-great-grandmother Gertrude (Burson) Record) happen to share a close connection to a true basketball great - The Boston Celtics's Larry Bird.
I've written about this connection before, but since I revisited Gertrude's life in the old newspapers this past week I decided to take a second look at our ancestor Gertrude's connection to Mr. Bird. It's important for anyone who studies family history to occasionally revisit their work so that any evidence can be easily looked up or re-verified.
So not to keep you...
Our family's connection to Larry Bird starts here, with this guy, our mutual "ancestor in common," a guy named William Harris from DuBois County, Indiana. (I will include an image of our shared genealogy from "Grandpa Bill" further below.)
Suffice it to say the connection begins through two of William Harris's children, his son Thomas, and a daughter, called "America."
(Above -1860)
William's son Thomas Harris married Julia Ann Simmons. (You can see the deep connection between the Harris and Simmons families in the 1860 census records.) I have relied on the information contained in the book Descendants of John Simmons and Allied Families... for a general history of the Simmons, Harris, and McGrew families, and especially for the birth of Julia (Simmons) Harris - who was Gertrude's grandmother.
Julia Ann (Simmons) Harris was also a twin.
Thomas and Julia (Simmons) Harris had a daughter named Sarah Jane. (They named her Sarah Jane after Julia's twin sister of the same name.) This relationship is also shown in census records for Dubois County. Sarah Jane Harris married Hiram Burson. Their daughter was Gertrude (Burson) Record.
(Left: 1870)
William's other child - a daughter (and Thomas's half-sister) named "America" Harris married a guy called Thomas "Henry" Bowman. (Marriage record shown below) Thomas Henry Bowman and America (Harris) Bowman had a daughter. Their daughter was called Anna Eliza Bowman.
Anna Eliza Bowman married George Washington Kerns. Their granddaughter, Georgia Kerns married a man named Claude "Joe" Bird. Georgia and Claude"Joe" Bird are the famous basketball player's parents.
Anna Eliza Bowman and Gertrude's mother, Sarah Jane (Harris) Burson are first cousins.
Georgia (Kerns) Bird and my grandfather Howard Jack Record are third cousins.
This makes the basketball great a fourth cousin of Gertrude's grandchildren.
Well, you didn't think I was going to make it easy for you did you? (Wink!)
Above : Death certificate for Georgia Bird
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Above: Cousins Georgia (Kerns) Bird and her son Larry
Some of you might think this is all wishful thinking. However, census records and other vitals support this relationship. I have also relied heavily on the cemetery records of the Crystal Community Cemetery in Dubois County, Indiana.
You see there's a whole mess of them buried there in the same cemetery.
From our ancestor William Harris (ca.1795-1867) the guy whose tombstone is shown and who is mentioned above, and all the way down to Larry's mother Georgia Bird. Yep, all buried in the same place.
Crazy, right?
Well, what else can I say?
Here's to a new generation of basketball players all cut from the same cloth!
(A fourth cousin twice removed to the great Mr. Bird.)
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