Beautiful Lives

(Author's note: Sometimes we must be uncomfortable in the study of things we don't know. It's the only way to get stronger at anything - genealogy included. I hope you will enjoy "meeting" or reconnecting with three incredible people - three beautiful lives.)

As always, unapologetically unedited.

Our ancestors' memories resonate within us. They aren't our memories, and we don't recall them in an 'ordinary' way, yet they flow through us much like the words to a song we can't quite remember. We feel their influence; they are often the cornerstones for what's true (and untrue) about ourselves.  For good and bad, they remind us that we do not escape what shapes us.

In writing about someone else's ancestors, it's easy to fall victim to our own interpretation of their lives. The memories that are the cornerstone of someone else's ancestry aren't always ours to see clearly. Even the facts may become obscured under this lens. It's easy to misconstrue an event, or mislabel a person, and in terms of research, all too often place the wrong person in the old genealogical queue. We don't share that unconscious collective consciousness that allows us to see or understand what's hidden in their ancestral memory. As a genealogist, and indeed as a human being, one must be mindful of this while researching someone else's life, someone else's family, and someone else's experiences.

Now I know very little about Italy beyond picture postcards, Michelangelo, great wine, or amazing food. As a wannabe genealogist, I know even less. Let's face it, my Italian isn't rusty; it's non-existent. So when Paige and Kevin asked me to look at Kevin's family lines, I was a bit daunted. I wasn't too bothered by Kevin's paternal Southern ancestry. Heck, I have my own ancestral memories that were weaned out of Chesapeake Bay and south of the Mason-Dixon. But many of Kevin's mother's family are first-generation Italian immigrants. How could I, a California Yankee, contribute anything here? Their collective memories, their ancestral consciousness, felt so unknown and so far away from the shores of, say, my old stomping grounds of WASP-y Huntington Beach.

However, then, as with anything. I figured I'd just start at the beginning. It's just a wee start, but what I've found initially are wonderful and extraordinary lives. I've found incredible resilience. I've found a terrible tragedy. I found silly things that Kevin's incredible ancestors laughed about rather than pass judgment on. Indeed, what I found were beautiful lives.

I thought I would share three of these lives with you. I think Kevin may know most of this already, or have heard about these lives and events whispered in the collective consciousness of his ancestors. Still, as someone familiarizing himself with Kevin's ancestry and these amazing lives, well, I need to mention that all three of them are certainly worth researching and always worth remembering. 

So enough of my claptrap. Let's start.

I have 'bound off' much of this information from what I could find among submitted family trees, original records, and old newspaper stories. I may be way off on some of this stuff. If I am, I hope you will forgive me. Wrong or otherwise, whoever these lives and these events were, they need to be celebrated.

I. "RESILIENCE"

GABRIELE SERAFINO RANEDAZZO/MELLINO/MELINI (1893-1969) I'm pretty sure that Kevin will recognize his grandfather's name in one of its several forms. I'm guessing, too, that the picture above of his grandfather is one that he will know. He (Kevin) may have even seen his grandfather's naturalization paperwork. (Image below) These are all well and good; however, the document I found to be the most telling about Gabriele Melini was the ship's manifest (second image pictured below) for Gabriele as he came through Ellis Island.            

Please pay attention to the last name listed at the bottom of the manifest:

Now, because I may have missed something in the images here, I am going to include the indexing to help clarify what the image contains:

            

That this is the correct image is indicated because it names Gabriell Mellini's father, "Randazzo, Gaetano" in the far right section, which is consistent with information supplied through family trees submitted by various family members. I have not been able to double-verify this record with the Statue of Liberty Ellis Island Foundation. I believe their website must have a transcription error, as the ship's manifest for Ellis Island is clear enough to discern if not read. The Ellis Island Foundation should be contacted for clarification or to point out the omission.

The curious thing about this record is that "Gabriell Mellini" appears to be not traveling with anyone, or, if so, with a family member I have not been able to identify. 

By all appearances, this eleven-year-old boy traveled from Italy to America alone.

Please do correct me if I am wrong. Talk about resilience.              

(As a side note, the following November of 1904, the ship that Gabriell Melini had arrived on that previous May, The Sicilian Prince, ran aground. There with 600 Italian immigrant passengers on board, causing quite a commotion. Fortunately, Gabriele had decided to take an earlier ship.)     

      Above: The New York Times, New York, New York, Monday, November 21, 1904, page 1

Okay, it's time to talk about a different boat. Now, don't get me wrong here. As far as Gabriell goes, I can neither "confirm nor deny" that this is Kevin's grandfather in the following newspaper article. Let's just say that whoever this man 'Gabriel Melino" was that he was an enterprising young fellow during prohibition. That Kevin's grandfather Gabriel Mellini was also certainly a fisherman, and the "Gabriel Melino" in the article also owned a fishing boat with a man named Tony Scola (Scola being the maiden name Gabriele's wife and of Kevin's grandmother, and an "in-law" family to Gabriell Melinni/Melino, etc.) it tends to make me think that the article in the newspaper is another example of a resilient spirit. :)

Above: The Boston Globe, Boston, Mass., Thursday, November 8, 1923, page 28

Or should I say "spirits?" lol.

I'm betting dollars to donuts that this is Kevin's grandfather. 

Cheers to you, Gabriele Mellini!

II. TRAGEDY

There's just no way to dance around this one. I'm not sure why I am mentioning it here, other than to show the resilience of the Ranzanno/Melino family. There's a lot about the Melino/Ranzanno clan that I am trying to piece together. And while this particular article doesn't really fill in any "required researching blanks," it spells a lot about what a family - and in this case, what an immigrant family - might have had to go through. Did anyone listen? Did anyone care? 

I'm going to back up a bit here. I want to talk about Kevin's great-grandparents, Gabriele Melino's mother and father. They are GAETANO RANDAZZA (1853-1933) and [sic]GEROLMA "MAMIE"(TOCCA) RANDAZZO/RANDAZZA (1858-1933). I'm not going to say a lot about them, but curiously, family trees show them as having three children, all boys, each born ten years apart. (I have not verified other children) They are Salvatore (1883), Gabriele (1893), and Giuseppe "Joseph" (1903). I have no reason to doubt this information; however, Kevin's grandfather Gabriele, is always referred to as a "Melini/Melino" and not a Randazzo/Randazza.

The next part is a bit of a genealogical puzzle. That puzzle leads me to wonder whether Gabriele may or may not have been their biological son. Gabriele Melini/Melino may have been the senior Randazzo's grandson, a son of their daughter, already married (to a Melino) and deceased by 1904. The senior Randazzos would have been well into their forties by the time the last boy, Joseph, was born, making it an interesting family dynamic with raising a grandson as their own son and as the middle child. Sadly, both the senior Randazzos appear to have passed away on the same day (December 21, 1933) for what reason I have not been able to locate.

However, this story, this tragedy, isn't about them. It is about their grandson. It's about Kevin's grandfather's brother, [Gabriele's brother], SALVATORE RANDAZZO (1883-1946), and his little boy, Gaetano Randazzo, named for his grandfather.

He went missing. The worst nightmare a parent can have.               

Above: The Boston Globe, Boston, Mass., Wednesday, July 18, 1917, page 8

And yes, I'm not going to say anything more about this. There is often tragedy in and amongst the beautiful lives of the people we have come from. Grandparents who pass away on the same day, and little boys who never come home. Most times, these memories lie forgotten in our collective stream of consciousness. We might not even remember. We might not even know. Still, it remains.

And a family that overcomes it somehow finds resilience in tragedy.

III. JUDGMENT

Honestly, I wasn't too sure about this. As a genealogist, Hell, as a family historian, one is supposed to report only "just the facts" and not get involved with perceptions, historical, contemporary, or otherwise. So believe me as I bring up [Giuseppe] JOSEPH RANDAZZO, JR. (1931-1969) I am doing so with the greatest amount of respect for this beautiful man's life and out of respect for the family. I will admit, however, that I am also bringing it up out of a peculiar sense of what feels like humorous irony.

Please allow me to digress.       

This last sketch is about [Giuseppe] JOSEPH RANDAZZO, JR. (1931-1969). He was the son of [Giuseppe] JOSEPH RANDAZZO, SR., who was the third son of GAETANO RANDAZZA (1853-1933) and [sic]GEROLMA "MAMIE"(TOCCA) RANDAZZO/RANDAZZA (1858-1933).  Kevin's grandfather, Gabriele Melini, was the little boy's uncle.

And no, I am not bringing this up because he was fat.                

Above: Lincoln Journal Star, Lincoln, NE, Thursday, November 12, 1936, page 7

I'm actually mentioning little Joey because he was also a near [unofficial] World's Record Holder for his size. I thought this was an interesting parallel (or a curious one) for Paige and Kevin. 

An amazing sort of: "World's Record Ripley's Believe it or Not" kinda parallel.

Read on. You'll see what I mean.        

  

Above: Central New Jersey Home News, New Brunswick, NJ, Oct. 25, 1936, page 5

I bring it up because little Joey Randazzo "grew" to worldwide fame in a contested weight class for big babies and children. This made the newspapers as Joey competed with another boy across the Atlantic in the UK. Fortunately and unfortunately, the boy in England ended up outweighing our hero, Joey, and relegating Joey Randazzo to 1936's [alleged] second heaviest child in the world. 

(I think I have that straight...)    

Above: Daily Mirror, London, England, Monday, Oct. 26, 1936

I realize that there was no official contest, and that Guinness or Ripley's didn't call on Joey; nevertheless, the singular title of [unofficial] World's 2nd Heaviest Baby is quite a title.

Humorous irony: Doesn't it make sense that a woman (Paige) who descends from "The 134-year-old man" would be married to a man (Kevin) who is a first cousin once removed of the child who was the [unofficial] "World's Record for Second Heaviest Baby?"  

(Irony, I say. Irony.)

I don't know about you, but I have nothing like that in my family tree. No "extraordinary ordinary" people. 

No "World's Record" or "Believe it or Not."

Heck, unless you count Dan. Lol. 

The BEAUTIFUL part of all of this is that the Randazzo family took pride in Joey's weight. (Yes, we all know that having (or being an) overweight kid is not a great thing) However, they did not pass judgment on the boy. Maybe they accepted what they did not know how to change or what couldn't be changed. They felt a great sense of pride in Joey's size and in who he was. They gladly accepted the challenge from the kid who ultimately too first place for heaviest baby/child in England.

Okay, call me crazy, (whatever...), but we could learn a lot from people like that. We could learn a lot about not passing judgment on someone else and about simply taking pride in who they are. 

I thought it was awesome.

No judgement. Total resilience. A beautiful life.

Postscript: I hope I have done a good job of representing the individuals here. I hope you will forgive my typos, errors, or misconceptions, or my unfamiliarity with the spelling of Italian names. I'm a bit of a bleary-eyed old man tonight, but my, what a privilege it has been "to meet" these amazing people along the genealogical road of life. 

Thank you, Kevin, for this.

☮

 

 Walk the Line

(Author's note: This is straight up genealogy. Some of it is still unresolved. To me, all of it's interesting. This is just my simple caveat. You may wanna run before I take you down the next rabbit hole - smile and peace out.)

                                                                  **********

As always, lyrically unedited.

Okay, well, I thought it was cool. What can I say? The genealogical conundrum of cousins in common and country singers is, well, a veritable fodder for country music. (lol) Now I know I am getting ahead of myself, but I hope you'll bear with me as I attempt to "walk the line" here, at least genealogically speaking. And no, before we get too far, I need to disclose that this post has nothing to do with "The Man in Black," other than that he, Mr. Cash, is strategically (and quite nicely) placed between the two effervescent ladies - the two subjects at hand.

Like most 'genealogical uncoverings,' I hadn't really expected to find it. I'd been working on polishing up a DAR patriot line from Captain Henry Connelly to my client Paige's husband, Kevin O'Neal, when it happened. I'd been unraveling the legend of both Captain Connelly's and Kevin's quasi-connection to that famous Scottish warlord of Rob Roy via the MacGregor clan when it "sang out." However, it was only after I'd relegated Captain Connelly and Kevin's relationship to Rob Roy back to the stack of genealogical "sure maybes" that I saw it. There it was: In smallish letters on the backpage of some smoke filled internet honky tonk bar, it said, "...and Captain Henry Connelly is a fourth great-grandfather to Loretta Lynn..."

Okay, I'll play. Drinks on me.

This, of course, would mean that Paige's husband Kevin would also be a cousin of country singer Loretta Lynn. 

However, I kept thinking, A cousin to what degree? Could it be proven? So I thought that, given the provisional pedigree shown below, I would give it a whirl, or at least a cursory look at viability. I figured that, like most celebrities, Loretta Lynn's ancestry had likely already been parsed out ad nauseum, so it really shouldn't be too tough to pair this country singer up with Kevin. (I am pretty confident in my assessment of Kevin's ties to Captain Henry Connelly.) However, I soon discovered that documenting Loretta Lynn's ties back to Captain Connelly was going to take more work than I'd originally thought. I would just have to see if I could resolve it and stay outta that unknown area or any genealogical "Ring of Fire." (Sorry, Johnny, Loretta, and Kevn, I just couldn't resist.)

Oh, before I forget, here is the basic pedigree I was working off in the image below:

Let's start by seeing what we have in the way of proofs for Loretta Lynn's line back to Captain Henry Connelly generationally:

Some of Generation One we will have already covered in the last blog post concerning Kevin's relationship to Captain Henry Connelly. Bear with me as I repeat some of it here. Images below:

         

      Captain Henry Connelly's documented son Edmund/Edmond 

Above: William Elsey Connelley, Ellis Merton Coulter, History of Kentucky, Volume III, American Historical Society, 1922, cropped from page 49

For Generation Two, I was lucky and found Edmund's alleged son, William Connelly, and his marriage to Anna McCarty. It's a very cool record. However, it differs from the family tree above in that it does not state that William Connelly's marriage to Anna McCarty was witnessed by his father, Edmond Connelly. It says rather that there was a (marriage) certificate given by "his father [William's] and Edmond Connelly" for William Connelly. (See image below)

So, yeah, that's a problem...while it's definitely a "Connelly family" marriage, it likely means that William is a grandson or nephew of Captain Henry's son Edmond Connelly. The relationship between Edmund Connelly and William Connelly is definitely a family one.  However, it's likely not that of a father and son. The relationship here feels more like that of a grandfather or an uncle bearing witness, or possibly a brother. Logically, it spells out like this: 

"Connelly Father of William" + Edmond Connelly + William Connelly."     

Still, even given this, I think we can move on from here down the line, at least provisionally, insofar as "Edmond, son of Captain Henry Connelly, was related to William Connelly" (and his father) named in the certificate.

                 

 Above: Kentucky County Marriages, 1786-1965, FamilySearch.org, Film no. 007747389

In the next generation, Generation Three, we find (the couple from the marriage certificate above) William Connelly and Anna (McCarty) Connelly's daughter Rachel Conley, age 17, living with her father William Conley and a woman who appears to be her stepmother. (Records show that Rachel Conley Salyer died about 1850 and that William quickly remarried a woman named "Dicey Bailey." (What kind of woman is named "Dicey"? Just saying...)

Their daughter Rachel Conley married John Salyer. (See marriage certificate below)

 

U.S. Census 1850, Floyd County, Kentucky, Family Search.org

And here below, where Rachel Conely marries John Salyer

 

Above: Kentucky, Marriages, 1785-1979, Family Search.org, Image Group Number 007734342

Generation Four: Rachel (Conley) Salyer and John Salyer's daughter, Rebecca Jane Salyer, is shown in the first image below, living with her parents, John Salyer and Rachel Conley Salyer. Rebecca Jane Salyer, who married Charles Gordon Ramey in the second image below:             

Above: U.S. Census 1860, Johnson County, Kentucky, Ancestry.com

   

Above: Kentucky Marriage Records, Family Search.org

     

Generation Five: The son of Rebecca (Salyer) Ramey and Charles G Ramey was Nathaniel Ramey, who married Sarah Blair:

       

Above: Kentucky Death Certificate for Nathaniel Ramey names his parents in Generation Four.

                            

Generations Six and Seven. (This obit for Loretta Lynn's mother should wrap things up pretty well. (No pun intended.)

                               

 Above: Loretta's mother, born Clara Ramey, living in the household of her father, Nathaniel, in 1920     

    

                                                             "Clara"

                 

              

To complete this, and in the interest of full genealogical disclosures, the line from Loretta Lynn to Captain Henry Connelly isn't fully resolved, at least insofar as I have been able to present it here. In 2012, a newspaper, the "Salyersville Independent," published a piece about a descendant of Edmond Connelly who was trying to get money for a marker for Edmond's grave. In the article, he lists all of Edmond Connelly and Lydia (Joines) Connelly's children. 

             

There is no mention that Edmond had a son named William. 

The article does, however, contain A LOT of other clues. There is an Edmond Connelly, Jr. that needs to be investigated, and also mention of the surnames "Salyer" and "McCarty" among the family names that Edmond's children married into. 

Remember from the pedigree above: "William Connelly married Anna McCarty"

                                                        Rachel Conley married John Salyer.

Throw in a birth record for Rebecca...

Now check out this image from the 1860 census:

            

There's no way the Connellys, McCartys, and Salyers aren't deeply connected.

So I'm good with holding that Loretta Lynn's fourth great-grandfather was Captain Henry Connelly - although if the pedigree holds true, he was actually her fifth great-grandfather. But since we know it doesn't necessarily hold true as presented ...we need to find that "fourth great-grandfather" Connelley mystery.

That being said, it all still makes Loretta Lynn and Kevin about sixth cousins.   

Now, why do I bring all of this up aside from walking the line around a genealogical ring of fire? Well, because Paige Dunham has her own country singer in her near and dear family tree in the beautiful June Carter Cash. I figured that if Paige has her own country singer that Kevin ought to also have his own. Enter the charming Loretta Lynn - oh, yeah, and her sister Crystal Gayle, too.

Just don't call me a Boy named Sue. lol.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

Wink!

☮

                            

 

Rumors of Legends 

The Battle of Culloden, Scotland, 1746

(Author's note...Getting to the bottom of one's relationship to a legend is always a risky business. Still, it behooves even the most impudent genealogist to try. What can be discovered? What can be known? And better yet, what can be proven?)

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As always, unequivoally unedited.

Discovering what can be proven in any family tree is always a difficult task. Much of the time, a genealogist will dig and dig only to get nowhere, or worse. Too often, you find yourself sinking your teeth into some family line that never quite works out. You think to yourself, Eureka! I've got one! only to find out that someone has added to it (to some branch of a family tree) via that time-tested method of only wishful thinking. So when this guy, the penultimate Scottish Warlord, pictured below, showed up, all I could think was,   

Really, et tu Rob Roy MacGregor? Really?

The reason I bring this up is that I have begun working on the family tree for Kevin O'Neal. Kevin is the husband of Paige Dunham, a client and recent acquaintance of mine who was referred to me by my own cousin via a DNA match, Dan Wells. (My long winded way of introductions.) I'm hoping to nurture Kevin's innate excitement and enthusiasm for his family history as I do my best to "take a look back" and blow off a little dust from his Ye Olde Branches. There's always cool stuff to be found. So believe me, when I thought there was a chance of Kevin being a lineal descendant of Old Rob Roy's through Rob Roy's grandson Archibald, well, I was pretty excited. 

Yeah, but that was a problem.

You see, Rob Roy didn't have a grandson named Archibald. A couple of hundred  Google searches later, and I realized I was barking up the wrong tree. 

This didn't or doesn't mean that Kevin isn't/wasn't a MacGregor, or even a MacAlpine (the family that married into the MacGregors). It only means that, thus far, I can't prove any tie to Old Rob Roy, citing original documents or viable published sources. So I had to ask myself: How is it that the rumors of Kevin's kinship to Rob Roy got started in the first place, that is, beyond wishful thinking? And indeed, how far back in the assumed line could I go before I truly "touched" upon Clan MacGregor? 

What could I prove?

I knew that I could get this far with reasonable certainty. To this guy below, who seems to be one Hell of a stand-up dude:                 

Yep. Captain Henry Connelly, a Revolutionary War patriot. Okay, before I get too far, though, let me get that pedigree down to look at. (I will show what I have in the way of generational proofs further on as we go.)            

As usual, the first three generations of the pedigree above are pretty easily spelled out. It's those pesky ones in the middle that tend to give us trouble. 

Say what? "Elizabeth...no no further record?" 

"Elizabeth Connelly, who married Aaron Tate? No further record? Well, that's not gonna work. It sounds to me like the guy who put "Colonial Families of America" together didn't want to work very hard or look very far.

However, this could mean I am going to need to cheat a bit to get to generation four, that is, to get to the marriage of Elizabeth Connelly to Aaron Tate. I'm using a previously verified Daughters of the American Revolution application for a gal named Kathleen Cunningham Rienstra. (Kathleen, who is also a cousin of Kevin). Now, Kathleen's isn't the only previously verified application for this couple, Elizabeth Connelly and Aaron Tate; there are seven others. And while in this instance it is strictly third-party hearsay, I think given the preponderance of other applications connecting "Elizabeth Connelly, as the daughter of Henry Connelly and Ann MacGregor, and the same woman who married Aaron Tate," that I'm good with it. There is a variation in the month of Elizabeth's birth between the published source and the DAR records, but this seems to be just miscellaneous errata. I don't see how two records don't ultimately jive just fine.

I should tell you the reason why I'm cheating and using DAR lineage applications as a reference for the couple. The truth is that if we were being completely thorough, I wouldn't. Instead, I would order the supplemental documentation listed in the corresponding application numbers to see what proofs they used. (Especially those numbers, 314562A421 and 692958A701, written in pen in between the last two generations) But that feels like a needless foray for our purposes here. And yes, please don't call the Mayflower Society and rat me out. The Historian General will bust my ass for not exhauting what could be contained in those other seven verified DAR applications.

 Now, let's get to generation four, where Aaron Tate and Elizabeth Connelly's daughter, Mary "Polly" Tate, married James Bryant. 

    Jacksonville Republican, Jacksonville, Alabama, Thursday, Oct. 30, 1862, page 3

For this, the probate notice in this 1862 newspaper does the trick pretty darn nicely. It names Aaron's widow, Elizabeth, and daughter [Mary] "Polly" Bryant, wife of James Bryant." It's especially cool because it also names Polly's sister, Susan Tate Cunningham, mentioned in the previous DAR record above. It's important, too, because Mary "Polly" Tate Bryant is oddly missing from some of the other published sources on the family of Aaron Tate and Elizabeth Connelly Tate. (See below) 

The probate notice above, though, takes care of that and clears up any missing family ties nicely.

Roy C. Shild, Dola S. Taylor, The Tate Family From England to Tennessee, 2nd edition, PDF, Hobby Press, no date. Daughter Mary "Polly" Tate is noticeably missing from the list of their children.

So you can see that I haven't relied solely on the DAR records, nor other erroneous genealogies like the one above, but have also opted to use this published source to complement that generation:

Above: Ethel Speer Updike, Laura Watson Mentzel, Tate Families of the South, Volume 2, Tate Family of Washington and Russell County, Virginia, Independent Enterprise, Payette, Idaho, 1984, page 12.

Ethel Updike's 1984 publication is well-researched with good citations that carry us back to Henry Connelly and even as far as Archibald MacGregor and Edith MacAlpine. What's perhaps even more noteworthy or helpful for our purposes here is that it corresponds to that probate record in the newspaper in that it provides a good sequence into the next generation of Mary "Polly" Tate, who married James Bryant. While there is a variation in the middle inital for "James Bryant" in the records (Some recording it as an "S" and others as an "A") it feels pretty evident we are moving along the right path in getting from the MacGregors, the MacAlpines, and Captain Henry Connelly, on down to Kevin.

It looks, though, like we are going to have to rely on the census and other records for the family of Mary "Polly" Tate and James Bryant. ("Polly" is a common nickname for Mary) To do so, we are going to have to start with "something we know," and that is that James and Mary moved to Marion County, Tennessee. Here is a copy of the U.S. Census for 1850 showing them there.

While the generations for this record need a whole lot more polish, it does show the family, most notably their daughter Sarah. Sarah, who, in the 1860 census image shown below, is now "Sarah Bryant." So, just how do we know that we have the same family? How do we know that "this is" the family who moved to Marion County, Tennessee? 

Well, first, check out that 1860 census:

Outside of the Bryant and Coldwell families living next door to each other here in, you guessed it, Marion County, Tennessee, there is one name at the bottom of the census record that really helps us tie them all together. The name is "Aaron Bryant." 

Now check out his death certificate:

"Aaron Bryant," likely named for his grandfather, Aaron Tate, who married (you guessed it) Elizabeth Connelly. The beautiful part is that the d/c tells give us the names of his parents that correspond to the census records. 

"Aaron Bryant," whose older sister, "Sarah Bryant," married "James Coldwell" in Generation Five as shown above. Now I am going to skip a record or two at this point. I am going to insert the obit for James Coldwell here, though, as while it isn't a marriage record for him and Sarah Bryant, it does lead nicely into Generation Six for his daughter, Amanda Coldwell [sic] O'Neil.

Above: Rumored to be Sarah Bryant Coldwell, 1827-1910

This rather troubling obituary, which mentions "Mrs. J. W. O'Neal, "who is the key to the next generation shown here:

Okay, we are making progress. This death certificate for Kein's great-great-grandmother looks to have been signed by Kevin's great-grandfather, and it names his great-great-great-grandparents.

Winner, winner, chicken dinner.

Now I know that Kevin has mentioned an O'Neal name change for one of his immediate generations. And while this can spell out a 'non-paternal event' such as an adoption, etc, these given source records do tie him back fairly succinctly to  Revolutionary War patriot Captain Henry Connelly.

They also tie him back to Clan MacGregor and MacAlpine.

So, just where did these rumors about Rob Roy start? 

Near as I can tell, they started with old Archibald.

"Edith and Archie's" home castle. (Or Edith's anyway :)

  

The above three images from William Elsey Connelley's, "Eastern Kentucky Papers, The Founding of Harmon's Station..." Torchlight Press, New Youirk, 1910, pages, various.

 

I guess I need to stop here. While I'd hoped to connect Kevin to the infamous Rob Roy of Clan MacGregor fame, I'm happy to have been able to bring his legally paternal lines to Captain Henry Connolly of the RW and at least approach the subjects of connections to Clans MacGregor andMacAlpine.

But then again, I'm just getting started.

Check back as you can. My posts here are fluid, and new content may be added.

☮

Post script: The following names in Kevin's tree are curious to me and deserve further exploration. They are (of course) "King," as it may connect to Paige, but also the name "McClung." In addition to this, the name "Pearson" as it might remotely connect to Dan Wells, and lastly, the name "Killian" - as it connects to yours truly.

Stay tuned.