A Wealthy Christmas

                                          

                  

(Author's note: Sometimes, small genealogical miracles do happen. Sometimes those miracles come in small "frowning packages" looking out at you from an old photograph - especially at Christmas time. Sometimes they are a small but "wealthy" miracle :)

Yesterday, a curious thing happened.

It's been cold outside. Christmas is just around the corner, but it's still too early to celebrate much of anything. So instead of humming Jingle Bells to myself, I figured I'd go to my familiar haunts and look through some old family lines. Lately, I've wanted to check out some of the vintage documents on familysearch.org, on the off chance of finding more evidence of the Mayflower family ties between William Church of Crawford and Mercer Counties, Pennsylvania, and his parents Jonathan Church, Jr., and Mary (Angell) Church, late of Montville, New London County, Connecticut.

(Mary Angell is a descendant of MP John Howland through her father William Angell of New London County, Connecticut)

I was looking for anything really; however, in this instance, I was searching for any onomastic ties that might 'strengthen William to his parents,' Jonathan and Mary, and to their collateral family branches. I’m a big believer that a family’s naming practices provide fundamental clues to generational relationships.

I'd seen where “Jonathan and Mary” named two of their sons “Jonathan” and “William” (after both of their fathers) but I hadn't seen where any of their children had repeated the name “Mary” (or "Molly") in homage to “Mary (Angell) Church,” their mother. While this isn't a necessary thing to prove lineage, I admit it seemed odd. This is a family who has beautifully perpetuated some of their older names (most notably the name of “Church”) from the 1700s nearly down to the present day.

It just didn't fit.

I zeroed in on the decades surrounding the death of William Church in (1863) with the hope of maybe finding his Will. (Sadly, I didn't.) What I did find was an old deed that identified the exact naming practice within the family I’d been looking for. I found one “Mary Church” - a daughter of William Church that I had not previously accounted for. (I had accounted for William’s other children Cyrus, Gaylord, Emily, and Miranda.)

It felt a bit serendipitous, as it wasn’t expected. I had located a Mercer County, Pennsylvania deed that identified this Mary as both the daughter of William Church and the sister of Gaylord Church. Unless there were two sets of them (i.e., William, Gaylord, and Mary) in Mercer County, Pennsylvania, I had hit a small amount of genealogical gold.

I found the genealogical homage I was looking for.

It made sense to me now.

Mary (Angell) Church named one of her sons "William" after her father William Angell. Her son William Church named one of his daughters "Mary" after his mother Mary (Angell) Church. (The naming connection I'd been looking for.) But what else was there that might tie this particular branch of the family together besides this old deed at least onomastically?

William Church married Wealthy Palmer - the mother of Mary Church. Mary Church (as evidenced in the above deed) married Daniel Kirkpatrick in Mercer County, Pennsylvania in 1842. Mary (Kilpatrick) named her daughter "Wealthy" thus bringing the naming practice full circle in this instance for the years spanning from 1744 (the birth of Mary (Angell) Church) to the birth of Wealthy (Kirkpatrick) Johnston almost one hundred years later (to the day) in 1844.

Crazy, right?

Okay, I know what you're thinking, "So what," right? I mean after all, what's so unusual about finding a confluence of old names that tie a family together? What sort of dumb Christmas miracle is that? You're right. It isn't one - it's frankly nothing more than elbow grease and a bit of luck. But what came next might surprise you. You see, I had to know more about this Mary Church and yes, maybe a bit more about her daughter Wealthy Kirkpatrick.

So I went to the proverbial family trees to look for Mary and for Wealthy. Oh, I found them. Fifty-seven instances of them. There were that many "brick walls" when it came to Mary Church. They were there with no answers whatsoever for "Mary Church." She and her daughter Wealthy had no family indicated to tie them into with or together. It was as if many had looked but had simply given up.

For the most part, the trees looked like this:

"Ye Olde Brick Wall."

So I did the only thing I knew to do. I wrote to one of them, a great-great-great-granddaughter of Mary's named "Melissa." I told her, "Hey, I think I have your Mary Church..." I sent her a copy of the deed. I sent her a page from the History of Montville and I explained her ties to William and to Wealthy (Palmer) Church and to Jonathan Church, Jr. and to Mary Angell and to John Howland of the Mayflower....

...and all this through her ancestor, Mary Church, daughter of William and Wealthy.

This was her reply:

"Wow, thank you so much!  I was unable to find anything about Mary Church for about 20 years!

So yes, genealogical miracles can happen and when they happen on Christmas and allow one part of a family to reconnect to its lost past and when they involve "a someone" named "Wealthy" you have to stop and wonder if you truly haven't found some of the meaning behind having a "Wealthy Christmas" after all.

To give the gift of lost family, well for me, I feel blessed to have (perhaps) brought about just a small bit of "family wealth" for a stranger...

Thank you, Lord, for giving me a small part this gift that I might share it somehow.

~ PEACE