SHUFFLE OFF TO BALTIMORE

                                            

Cecilius Calvert - 2nd Lord Baltimore

Warning: This blog post is straight-up genealogy. If you have no interest don't waste your time. No harm no foul.

As always, unapologetically unedited

     Family history has one enemy - time. I suppose you could say that it is a two-edged sword, that is the need "for time" to research, gather, and problem-solve things that occurred in our ancestral past. However, it is also that very "time" that unless we are diligent and very careful causes all of those things - the things we researched, understood, and yes even inherited - to slip away from us and back into the "unknown again." As they say these days, It can be a bit of a bitch.

So is speculation.

Reuben and Mary (Peek) Schooley

the parents of Hester (Schooley) Record

This happened to me just this past week when I needed to look at the Last Will and Testament of my great-great-great-grandfather, Micajah or (Micager) "Cager" Peek (1785-1854). I knew I had seen a copy of it someplace in my travels; I'm quite certain that I kept a photocopy of it that I inherited from Cousin Barbara back in the 1990s. However, when I went to look for it it was gone. I recalled that in our last move and in our necessity to 'condense" my genealogical work/research I had looked at Grandpa Cager's LW&T and thought, What do I need this for? When will I ever need to look at it? And like a thief in the genealogical night, "time" came and stole my copy of Grandpa Cager's LW&T. I am now back to square one in needing a document for verification -  one that I once had. It means that I will need to start over in tracking one down again - another copy that will (no doubt) just get lost again in the next down-sizing or Great Purge that follows after all of our inevitable demise.

   

My need for a copy of Grandpa Cager's LW&T wasn't so much about Cager but about his wife Millie. Cager's Peek family lines, while not excessively well documented show enough "leads" or anecdotal evidence to get you where you want to go in understanding that branch of the family. The Peeks of Virginia is where you eventually end up and Cager's father Jonathan Peake is a documented Revolutionary War patriot. They are a pretty great old southern family. I admit though, I have never had a lot of interest in studying the South. Because of my lack of interest here, I have let some of these families slide back into that deep well of time again. However, like all things karmic and genealogical, sooner or later "time" will make you eat your vanity and give you the need to take another look.

Now I should mention that Grandpa Micajah "Cager" Peek was a pretty cool dude - he served terms in the Indiana State Legislature:

     

This happened to me the other day when the algorithm on Ancestry.com "proposed" a possible father for Cager's wife and my four-time great-grandmother Mildred "Mille" Peek. Now before I get too far, I need to tell you that Grandma Millie's maiden name has always been "set down" as "Marrell." There are reasons why this is so but let me just say that her maiden name of "Marrell" has been in print since at least the early 1980s. It's a surname that has rolled copious family trees straight into a huge genealogical brick wall where it has sat (and been duplicated again and again ) for the last forty years or so - and all without a shred of proof.

              

Above image: The source of Mildred Peek's maiden name was based only on possibility and conjecture.

I ignorantly accepted Mildred Peek's maiden name as "Marrell" based on the records I inherited from my cousin in the 1990s. I knew that my cousin regarded "Grandma Millie" as a bit of a genealogical dead end or a "Marrell" problem that she could never resolve, extend, or identify, and, in truth, I accepted it. I watched too as over the last forty years the surname of "Marrell" got copied and pasted into numerous Peek/Schooley and auxiliary family trees to the point where if "Marrell" wasn't Millie's actual maiden name it had become so de facto. (I also watched various family trees call Mildred "Cynthia" - a name that appears to be that of her daughter-in-law) My cousin had accepted Mildred Peeks' maiden name as "Marrell" - likely from the published information/correspondence available at the time - and not actually any vital or other records. Remember: DOing genealogy in the 1980s was frickn HARD. YOu actually had to work for your answers and not just double-down on your Google searches. 

Yet like everything that was about to change.

  

Above image: My cousin Barbara's early 1990s family pedigree chart shows "Mildred (Marrell) Peek"

  

Above image: Mildred's daughter Mary (Peek) Schooley

You see, the other day the algorithm indicated that I had 48 (!!!) DNA matched to someone named "WILLIAM HORRALL." 

Who the heck is William Horrall?

These matches indicated that William Horrall was the likely father of Mildred "Millie" Peek.

    

Had it just been a typographical error that had caused Millie's name to be bastardized into a genealogical brick wall for the past forty years? It kind of looks that way. 

But really, could it be just that simple? 

Being a bit unnerved by my inherited mistake regarding poor Grandma Mildred I figured I'd better get to work and see what was out there. It didn't take me long before I came across an old county biography that seemed to paint well with what the DNA algorithm was telling me:

               

Above image: History of Daviess County Indiana..., 1915, page 589

Now this county biography was published in 1915. It was available to my cousin Barbara or the authors Jack and Evelyn Peek in 1985 - but it wasn't a readily available source. They would have had to stumble upon it at a library in Daviess County, Indiana. No Google search was going to reveal anything to anyone. Even now, with the proliferation of the maiden surname for Mildred Peek as"Marrell/Murrell" and reprinted in hundreds of family trees if I had seen this section of the Daviess County biographies (correctly) stating the name as "Horrall" - I would likely have moved past it and concluded that the name "Horrall" was the typographical error - and not looked back.

Finally, though, I can correct Mildred's maiden name to "Horrall" and possibly extend her family line for the first time in forty years to her alleged father William Horrall, and his wife Priscilla Calvert Houghton. After all, the 48 DNA matches along with the county biography confirm it, right?

Maybe not so fast.

As I mentioned above things aren't that simple. While it would be easy enough for me to say Eureka! I have found it and corrected the family line I have to consider some other big factors before doing so. 

The first one is that William Horrall and his wife Pricilla Calvert (Houghton) Horrall had no daughter named "Mildred."

                  

                     

Now quite conveniently, there is a space in between their children Thomas and Sarah that "accommodates" Mildred (born 1789) quite well - but this becomes conjecture. That the migration of William and Priscilla Calvert (Houghton) Horrall from Virginia to South Carolina and to Daviess County, Indiana is almost the exact same migration pattern as Cager Peek's parents lends some strong credibility that these families were at least on the same wagon train together.

And then there is that pesky problem of 48 DNA matches between myself and Grandma Millie's descendants and William Horrall's descendants.

The descendants match in the range of fifth to sixth cousins making it almost impossible for Grandma Millie and the rest of us not to be their kin.

Obviously, there's no easy solution here and only one heck of a lot of sifting to get done. It is possible that our Grandma Mildred (Horrall) Peek was the daughter of a brother (or uncle) of the William Horrall the DNA algorithm is trying to put into play. 

It's especially difficult when (this far) family trees show that Grandma Millie's mother would then be Priscilla Calvert Houghton Horrall - an alleged relative of Lord Baltimore. 

Believe me, this is a whole lot to unpack here and one heck of a lot of unproven speculation. BUT consider this - ONLY last week nobody really knew what Grandma Millie's true maiden name was.

It's got to make you wonder. Man, do I have some work to get done or what?

                        

Now how all this fits together (if at all) may take me another twenty years to figure out...

As I say though - I know more than I did just last week.

Believe me, thus far there's no proof of the "Lord Baltimore" connection - only a rumor in an old newspaper. Still, it beats a rumor of being related to one of the many actors who played "Bozo the Clown."

Lord Baltimore or Bozo the Clown

Seems easy, right?

Sadly, it's probably all bull hooey.

BUT - we did get Grandma Millie's maiden name out of it all.

Above image: "Grandpa" Leonard Calvert - Lord Baltimore's younger brother and, per the newspaper article above, our alleged ancestor.

(I'm sure you see my resemblance to Grandpa Lenny...)

Remember: Genealogy without proof is only fiction.

                             

Yikes. But a relative of LORD BALTIMORE??? 

Sounds good to me.

PEACE.

BURNT COOKIES

                                  Maxine 

Family history is often a simple study of frightened hypocrisy and our innermost insecurities. It is a study of select bigotries set amidst the self-righteousness of our own singular and lonely realities.

As always, unapologetically unedited

I.

(You only thought you were in the right - you like me - with our high and mighty sense of self-serving superiority and sense of absolute immunity from it all. What did others do before us? What did others think before you?)

*****

This is the story as it was never told.

An exhausted wind blew in from the kitchen window that day and across the countertop. A nearby stove belched hotly as if in agreement as she knelt to open the oven door. The air around her rustled; it picked briefly at a well-thumbed recipe circled on a page of the Press-Telegram. The recipe's page was floured and smudged where it was folded and lay slightly greased against the mixing bowl. Here it was greeted by a peanut butter-covered spoon that slid lazily toward the sink. Through that same window, she heard the rumble of trucks on the highway headed to the Port of Los Angeles. She smelled the trail of their exhaust as it infringed on the peanut buttery heat of the day.

Not far from the kitchen adults argued between "Adalai or Ike" in November, and sparred bellicose jabs back and forth like workers pitted against each other on the picket line. Kids in the other room played Cowboys and Indians save for the one or two that ran through the kitchen asking her Are the cookies ready yet?  She heard the dial chunk forward and the slap of canned clapping as Ed Sullivan introduced Topo Gigio on the television. Weren't the kids up too late? She hoped they'd all be gone soon enough, but the kids were out for summer so it was hard to say. Maybe later she'd get a chance to watch What's My Line? in peace. At least it would only be another few minutes before the next batch - the second batch - came out. 

The first batch had burned. Maxine wasn't quite sure what she'd done wrong - maybe the peanut butter was too old or too greasy, or maybe she hadn't measured the flour or sugar correctly. She knew that she should have used more lard but the recipe was all a bit muddled in her brain. She was, after all, quite ill. Her mind kept drifting to what would happen to her darling Kenny when she was gone. Those burned cookies had been just her easy excuse to escape for a moment the thought of her life and death, and the fact that like life and her body, the recipe had failed her. 

She heard her husband and the men arguing about wages at the Port, about the damn Communists, and about just giving up and going back home to where things were always better in Kansas. She heard the cackle of her three sister-in-laws and two Great Aunts, of her cousins' sons, and of someone else's mother-in-law's neighbor from across the street - all bitching or gossiping about this and that. They talked about playing Canasta or Bunko next Tuesday night and all pretended not to hear the hushed whispers from the men about how Bill Bess had taken the car's exhaust to himself in his closed garage last week. You know the doctors said he might try to do it again... She heard one of the sisters yell to her in the kitchen, Maxine do you know "Lucille" Bess - that poor dear?  

                         

                 

They talked about cutting back the pyracantha bushes and the Jap gardener who smiled all the time but did damn good work but who barely spoke English. She heard one of the men say, I think he smells like fish. She heard her neighbor's chortle and chaffe that there "was nothing but white kids singing and dancing like the niggers" on the TV programs anymore. She thought for a moment her ears would burst from all their babble. Did they not realize she was doing everything she could to just stay alive? She'd just got back from the City of Hope. 

She heard someone yelling at Jimmy to set his punch on the table and to take it off the television set before he knocked it over. She could hear someone asking her sister-in-law "Where has Maxine run off to?" and someone else grunt, "Well, she's in the kitchen of course trying to fix her damn cookies," they guessed.

Finally, the timer rang off. The smell of peanut butter and freshly baked cookies floated through the air. This batch was perfect. They were nicely formed and ever-so-golden brown with just the right texture and ripple effect. There'd be no mistake when folks bit into them that they were indeed the best peanut butter cookies anyone had ever made. She removed them carefully from the baking sheet, sliding them off gently onto the waxed paper and officially segregating them from their burnt brethren from the first batch. Maybe she should just toss the first batch out? They looked so tired. They looked so exhausted.

             

Maxine stepped back and admired her work. She shook her hands and rubbed her arms to get the blood to flow back into them. She tugged at her cooking gloves making sure they covered the marks on her arms from the disease. She rubbed at her hidden sores. She knew the sisters all watched her thinking that they or the kids might catch her disease if she didn't cover herself but they were too selfish or too embarrassed to say a word.  Could they? Could they catch it? After all, nobody really knew where she'd contracted it from. Was it at that hospital in Kansas City like she'd always told everyone it was? 

She wondered sorrowfully, but half smiling at the thought of it. Yeah, that would shut them up, she thought to herself. Maybe she'd ask Kenny to put some cream on the sores for her later. That would help. That would be perfect. This second batch of cookies was perfect too. For a moment she didn't feel so tired or so exhausted. And then her nephew ran through demanding, I want a cookie right now!

He was that good but bright and sometimes demanding kid. The boy was Kenny's first cousin but Kenny was so much older or so she thought. She didn't pay much attention to how all the kids were related to one another. There were so many. It seemed like they were all someone's brother or sister or niece or nephew's kid, or some half cousin of someone from back home. It all muddled her brain. Maybe the cortisone shots she had scheduled would help with that too?

Her mind felt jumbled up, sticky, and burned. For a moment, she couldn't tell the cookies from the sores on her arms. She could hear her sister-in-laws' laughing in the other room. The loud cackle of their laughter and cigarette smoke wafted into the peanut butter smells escaping from the kitchen. She heard one of them comment that her coffee was getting cold waiting for those cookies. She heard one of the sister-in-laws harrumph yet another tale about how she'd managed to get a good price on pork shoulder at the Value-mart after complaining to the manager that they still needed to honor a coupon expired from the day before. She would be nobody's fool that's for sure.

    

Maxine

"Jimmy, the cookies are for everyone," she nodded at him while hurriedly whipping the grease from her hands onto the kitchen towel. The recipe from the Press-Telegram fluttered in the hot breeze as if in some small greasy agreement.

"I want one now!" Jimmy howled in reply. "You let Robbie Sullivan and the Stubbs boy have punch before I did. I want a cookie before they get one. It's not fair!"

"Fine," she replied. She winced, looking over at her perfectly baked second batch of peanut butter cookies. Did she really want to disturb them - her perfect cookies? She felt the sores on her arms throb a bit like warning beacons at the port. She preferred to carry her cookies out en masse to the group of women in the other room. They were for everyone. She needed everyone to see that they were perfect. She needed everyone to see that she was perfect too. Still, there was Jimmy who wouldn't leave her alone. Oh, what harm could it do if she gave him just one? The sores on her arms throbbed. The cookies really were perfect, weren't they?

  

Then it struck her. The burned ones. Jimmy probably wouldn't even know the difference. Quickly moving in front of that perfect second batch and bustling her apron around in front of him she took one of the lesser burn-scared cookies and gave it to Jimmy. Who would ever know? The boy grinned in unsweetened delight as he ran off to brag to the others about his spoils. Then she gathered together the perfect ones, that second batch, and presented them like Betty Crocker might have. Then she walked them out to the back porch to share that perfection, to share them where the men watched outside from the late evening barbecue, and to where the other women and other children gossiped and played games, and to where they all descended on her and that second batch of simply perfect cookies like vultures on a peanut butter carcass.

Or so she hoped.

It was about then that she heard her sister-in-law's voice. Why did you give my son a burnt cookie???

And so it was as it was in the beginning...

                                                         *******

                "The Mistaken Man" 

We are each nothing more than Maxine or Bill Bess.

We are each never hearing anything more than the echo of someone else's cackling sister-in-law.

We are each all Jimmy more or less.

We are each that someone reaching for some grease-covered recipe.

We are each never anything more than burnt cookies put to the test.