The Gardener’s Gambit

 

(Author's note: Sometimes an old family legend is just worth revisiting)

As always, iced over with un-edits.

It was a long time ago now, and I admit, the story is even foggier today than it was then. However, I have to believe, it’s a family rumor worth repeating. After all, how many families have even the remotest connection to that ill-fated ship, The Titanic??

And believe me, my connection to both is definitley remote. But...

The story was handed down by an "almost-passenger," Reginald Lucking, or rather in this case handed down to me by his daughter, Lois. "Reg" was married to my cousin Juanita, and while stories about "lost Titanic tickets, etc .." are extremely common, this particular tale has been a family 'ice-breaker' of our own now for decades. 

Who knew? Lol.

Above: The effervescent Reginald Lucking with wife Juanita (Record) Lucking 

I first "heard" it via an old email chain sent out twenty-five years ago. Cousin Lois gave me a version of events that I’ve been trying to reconcile ever since. Was it true? Was any part of it true?

It kinda starts with her grandfather, Philip Lucking, a gardner who came to the States. Old Phil wanted his family to join him.                              

In the interest of fair reporting, here is exactly what Lois told me then:

"So I will tell you this story as best I can. I need to get out the audio tape to get the story straight....I will tell you this story as she remembers it. The tape is of Daddy's last remaining sister, Winifred Lucking."

"In 1912, the year of the Titanic's ccrossing of the Atlantic Ocean, Daddy [Reg] was 11. He was the third eldest of seven children, Tom, Evelyn, Reg, Winifred, Amy, Hilda, Harold - children of Philip John Lucking and Agnes Seymour of Muggerhanger, Bedfordshire, England. Grandpa Lucking [Phillip shown above] was a head groundsman for English estates. Some of the estate owners also owned estates in the U.S.. Grabdpa worked for one who also was a part owner of a shipping line. Grandpa worked over here [U.S.], and sent for the family. He or Grandma Lucking wanted the Titanic. The other one [grandparent?] wanted "which one had already made at least one crossing." [per Lois: "... that's the fuzzy part of the story']. The decison to sail on the other ship probably had to do with a better price on the tickets.

While they were at sea, there were radio reports of the Titanic's trouble. Uncle Tom, the oldest, who had a lifelong interest in radio was allowed in the radio room and heard some of the broadcasts. Freddy [Winifed] didn't remember that, but I think Daddy [Reg?] told us that.

So the reason I am here is because they didn't go out on the Titanic. You should call Winifred and wish her a happy birthday. She will be 95, but will thrilled to hear from you."

The 95-Year-Old Witness

It was the year 2000, not too long after we’d stopped partying like it was 1999. Lois told me to call Reg’s sister, Winifred, if I wanted the full story. I'd only met the effervescent Reggie once or twice as a kid, and he and Juanita were long gone. I wasn't sure what to say to a woman I'd never met, but Lois said I needed to hurry. 

Winifred was, after all, turning ninety-five.    

   Above: The somewhat stoic storyteller - Winifred Agnes Lucking - 1924 (Though the facts are a bit vague here as this may be a picture of their kid sister Amy.)    

                               

When the phone rang on that frosty February morning, I was greeted by an equally bright, wonderfully British Winifred Lucking. Her version differed a bit—she implied tickets had been lost or "gambled" along the way. But hearing that Titanic tale told with an authentic Edwardian flavor was awesome. 

True or not, I never imagined having a phone call with an "almost-passenger."

2025: Fact-Checking the Legend 

Fast forward to today. With better technology and access to digital archives, I decided to take another crack at the mystery. I started with the "ubiquitous gardener," Philip John Lucking. I found his "Declaration of Intent" showing he was already established in Greens Farms, Connecticut, by early 1912. 

Then, I found the "smoking gun": the ship’s manifest for the SS Minnewaska.

          

It's how the rest of Phil's family arrived.

Here is what the "algorithm" of history revealed:

• The Departure: Agnes and the seven children departed London on March 30, 1912—a full two weeks before the Titanic sank. They arrived on April 10 - five days before the Titanic sank.

• The Financial Gambit: They weren't just being "frugal." By choosing the Minnewaska, they traveled as "Cabin" passengers (Middle Class) for roughly the price of "Steerage" (Third Class) on the Titanic. Philp knew that his family would be more comfortable on the slower and grantedly less glamorous Minnewaska.

• Tickets lost or gambled away - likely not. "A better buy" on a different ship during the same time frame sounds more accurate.

• The "One Crossing" Rule: Lois was right—the Minnewaska was a vetted, "One-Class" ship that had been crossing since 1909. They traded the glamour of a maiden voyage for the safety of a proven workhorse.

• The Shared Ocean: The Minnewaska arrived in New York on April 10, 1912.

A Ghostly Intersection

The two ships effectively swapped places. 

           

   Scenes of the Minnewaska                         

   

The SS Minnewaska arrived at Pier 58 (part of the famous Chelsea Piers) in New York at 8:00 AM on Wednesday, April 10, 1912.

According to the Port of New York shipping news for that day, the Minnewaska was one of the few liners arriving from London. While the "First Class" list for the Minnewaska featured high-society names like Violet Asquith (daughter of the British Prime Minister), the Lucking family was listed in the "Cabin" manifest—the sweet spot Philip chose to give his seven children a comfortable, dignified arrival.

On the exact morning the Titanic was pulling away from the dock in England to start its first and last journey, the Luckings were pulling into New York harbor to start their new lives.

So I guess technically they were "at sea" at the exact same time.    

This explains why 13-year-old Thomas Lucking heard those wireless reports. 

The airwaves would have been thick with news of the Titanic's grand departure that day. When the news of the sinking hit five days later, the family was already safely ensconced in Connecticut.

If Reg and Winifred had been on the Titanic instead of the Minnewaska, they would have been in the middle of the Atlantic on a Sunday night, April 14, 1912.  Because they were "Steerage" price-equivalent passengers, they likely would have been in the lower cabins of the ship when the impact occurred at 11:40 PM. - And they would have been trapped with the rest of the throng.

I guess being frugal paid off.

The legend isn't necessarily a falsehood; it’s a memory of a perfectly timed escape. Sometimes things don’t make sense when you are out to sea in your memories, but the documents don't lie.

Gotta watch out for those fake icebergs. 

Rest in peace, Winifred. 

It's still an amazing tale.

☮

Past Perfect

Above: Your humble author from by-gone days - À la recherche du temps perdu

(Author's note: "None")

As always, unapologetically, unedited.

It’s funny. There’s an expression in grammar that always mirrors genealogy for me: past perfect. It represents the sum total of the many imperfections that equate to our own lives. Right or wrong, good or bad, each of those moments travel together to make us who we are—all of us ending with a comma, period, or exclamation point.

In grammatical terms: Oh, how they had lived!

Indeed, I’ve studied these people (or members of my own family in any event) since the Carter Administration, and back when home computers were the size of Volkswagens. They were the "original ones"—the people I first questioned as a kid and later began to research as an adult. For me, they were titans. But who were they really? Where did they - or we - come from? 

Why did there never seem to be any answers?  

Lately, even with all the so-called genealogical breakthroughs I've had through the years, I’ve come to realize I don't really know them at all. Their lives are proving out to be so much more multi-layered than than I once believed, and extending far beyond the reach of simple vital records.

 Now, with the help of better access to different types of documents beyond just the "basic vitals," and, yes, alongside the evil genius behind "AI searches," I’m able to learn so much more. Because of this, I thought I’d share a couple of these profiles of people I thought there was nothing left to learn about. Who knows? Maybe they’re still reaching out, trying to get someone to understand the rest of the story.

The Conundrum

The story of my great-great-grandfather, John H. Record (1840–1915), is perhaps the most peculiar—and for me, the best conundrum. It's a conundrum that has nothing to do with his mystery extra (and often quite random) middle initial "O" or any silly dark secret from his wagon train days heading west from Maryland to Kansas. Rather, it deals with a fourteen-year-old ward of the court named James Follin (1869–?), whom my great-great grandfather, John H. Record, took in to raise.

Keep in mind, John had two wives (widowed once) and twelve kids of his own between the two. And while it's true that in nineteenth-century Kansas, taking in an orphan wasn't unheard of.... but you see... here's the unsettling part: he "farmed out" two of his own biological sons at almost the exact same time he took in this foster ward.

Notice: September 1883 the surname is spelled "Records"

It’s a head-scratcher: You can’t take care of your own kids, but you’ll take in someone else’s? 

Sadly, the reason was likely cold economics. He couldn’t afford his older boys, but the foster boy provided a county stipend. It’s a tough break when you have to trade two of your own flesh and blood for a child who brings in a check. In John’s defense, he still had ten other mouths to feed. Survival in the 1880s was a brutal business. It’s a part of the story you never see in any census record. 

So just who were you, James Follin?

Stay tuned.

On the Wagon

Then there are the rumors—the ones other branches of the family whisper, or stories that were perhaps too painful for our own branch to recall.

"Is it true your great-grandfather was crushed by a barrel that rolled off a wagon and disfigured him? That he nearly died?"

My great-grandfather, Frank Record (John’s son), was a fastidious man, a church janitor, and as kind human being as you would ever want to know - and a guy who flirted with his nurses even in his eighties. Surely the rumors were wrong. Frank had been dead thirty years; what did they know?

Still... I remembered the one clouded lens in his eyewear. What was he hiding? As a boy, I didn't see disfigurements. He was past perfect to me. I did remember how his head seemed a bit flat on one side. Yet, he was the kindest great-grandfather a boy could ask for. Why would I believe such a rumor?  

Above: Chanute Blade (Chanute, KS), August 4, 1887.

He was four years old.

Yesterday, the truth surfaced. An AI search did what three decades of manual digging couldn’t: it indexed a grainy, century-old newspaper scan lost in time. In black and white, it detailed the awful accident of a little boy who would eventually grow up to father the family that produced me. The rumors hadn't wronged him; they were all too true. 

Still, he was so perfect just the way he was.

The Girl

Every good story has one, right? For this one, I need to circle back to John H. Record and introduce you to Della Record (1887-1910). She died at the tender age of twenty-three, leaving behind a husband, Theodore, and a little girl named Juanita.      

                                

                  Above: Della Crockett Record

I found a guardianship document for little Juanita, but the "why" was confusing. Apparently, Kansas law was rigid: even though Juanita’s father, Theodore, was alive, he had to legally become her "guardian" to manage her affairs. Della (born Miss Della Crockett) had left an inheritance, and the law required Theodore to post a bond—a legal guarantee that even though he was her father, he wouldn't abscond with his daughter’s portion of her mother’s estate.   

                                   

 

 Above: Juanita, and again, with the rumored to be "Titanically fortunate" Reginald Lucking

In an act of family solidarity, John H. Record and his sons stepped up to put up the money, protecting little Juanita’s future. Who knew? Little did they know that Juanita would grow up to marry a man whose family had nearly sailed on the ill-fated Titanic—but that’s a tale for another day.

The Legacy

I couldn't believe it when the digital snippet appeared on my screen. I had seen this information before; it was, after all, in a binder on my bookshelf. It was the same binder my cousin Barbara had given me years ago, back when she first told me the rumor about Frank being crushed by the wagon. She had handed me that binder, along with a single photo of Della, before Alzheimer’s claimed her mind. She gave them to me because she was terrified she would forget it all.

   

Above: Barbara's work - on file with the Church of Latter Day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah

But what was it doing here? It turns out, Barbara had the foresight to send a copy of her records to the archives in Salt Lake City. A simple, Commodore 64-style computer printout from decades ago had been preserved in the Granite Mountain vaults. And now, Barbara's work was available on an AI and Internet search. 

Incredible.

Barbara had managed to leave a record of us—The Records—behind. I wonder if her own kids realize that there is a permanent family legacy sitting in those reaches of Salt Lake's Granite Mountain, a record their own mother created and ensured would be preserved, just waiting for a text search to reveal it twenty years later.

 

She knew it would all end up past perfect. These lives—the lives of all of us "Records" - and any of us —are signposts along a simple road. 

A road someone, someday, might, with any luck, just call... a road home.

END

On Morning Star Road

~ OR GENEAOLGICALLY STRANDED ON STATEN ISLAND 

           EPHRAIM PARKER (1824-1902)

(Author's note: Sometimes it's the place that tells the story)

As always, unapologetically, under-edited. 

This post is a work in progress...please check back.

Sometimes in genealogy, it isn't so much the person that captures you. It's the place. Recently, this happened to me as I attempted to "push back" the lines of husband and wife team Ephraim Parker (1824-1902) and Martha Palmer (1833-1902). I'd had (and do have) the best of intentions in finding a "Connecticut Yankee" among this Parker/Palmer clan of my friend and client, Paige Dunham. Instead, however, these intentions and the research that accompanied them took me on a wild ride through the property lines of a place called Northfield, in a County called Richmond, and in a place better known to "we Western folks" as Staten Island. And yes, all of this and introduced me to a guy who appears anecdotally in Paige's ancestry, and by my best guess is her 6th-great-grandfather. 

And a guy simply known of as: 

"The Sheriff."

You see, I've been hoping to connect Martha (Palmer) Parker of Staten Island to Great Migration immigrant Walter Palmer of Stonington, Connecticut, (think 1630s). Old Walt is a Palmer ancestor of myself and also of my cousin genealogcially inclined Cousin Dan about five times over. Truth be told, though, I got a little sidetracked in looking at Martha's husband Ephraim's Parker lines...and well, that led me to get a bit "stranded on Staten Island."

It was as I was looking through the somewhat "difficult to discern" Parkers and Palmers of said fantasy island that I found my way to "the place they once lived," and an area associated with the family of "The Sheriff" and a place they still call Morning Star Road.

However, before there was just simply a property called or along any place called on "Morning Star Road," and before there were Parkers and Palmers living there in the 1850s, there was a great homestead and large tracts of land that belonged to the Taylor family. Now as genealogical rumor has it, Ephraim Parker's mother was a lady named Catherine Taylor. Catherine Taylor's mother was a lady named Sarah Hillyer. 

Or so they say...Hmmm.? This ancestry is a wee bit murky and come out of a place that calls streams and creekbed marshes "kills." 

I mean, WTF? 

Anyway, this Taylor land that somehow Ephraim Parker's father John Parker acquired by marrying a girl from the better side of the "kill" (lol) in turn, was part of the vast Hillyer holdings in Northfield, Richmond County, Staten Island, New York. The patriarch of this land appears to be a guy by the name of John Hillyer. It was Paige's ancestor, this same "Grandpa John" who was commissioned as the High Sheriff of Richmond County in October 1761.

Hence, "The Sheriff"

And, by all accounts he was a remarkable man.

According to Ira K. Morris’s History of Staten Island, Hillyer was a man of "approved integrity" who became a legend for his moral defiance. (LOL, right??) During a time of oppressive "King’s debts" warrants, Sheriff Hillyer famously stood his ground, refusing to arrest his neighbors. He is recorded as stating:

"I will not turn the county jail into a nursery for the King's debts."

By refusing the warrants, he risked his own commission to protect the households of Richmond County. This legacy of integrity is written into the very dirt of the property Paige's family would hold for the next century.

However, connecting the dots between the Parkers, the Taylors, and the Hillyers of Richmond County, Staten, Island, New York has required more than just names; it has required geographical triangulation. In an 1858 Indenture, the boundary of the Parker lot is implied as running along the boundary of what was once Taylor land. And thanks to Sarah's mother Hester Hillyer’s and her 1791 Will, we know that Sarah Taylor was actually Sarah Hillyer, daughter of the Sheriff.

I think I got all that. Makes my head hurt too. Lol.

(Sidebar: Who knows?! Maybe I will get to those darn Palmers next time?)

In the meantime...

By mapping the Parker lot against the ancient boundaries of some folks called the Mersereaus and Housmans and their "patents—the Sheriff's original neighbors—a clear picture emerged. The Parker homestead sat directly on the "Taylor Line"—the legal partition of the old Hillyer farm. The Parker deeds describe the land as being on the "East side of the highway leading from the North Shore to the Morning Star." This wasn't just a neighborhood; it was the physical footprint of the Hillyer estate, preserved through the generations.

At least if I have it straight anyway. I'm still learning "deed-talk" and "1874."      

 

In my defense, I am a bit blue in the face today from looking at old maps - and from raking a skadillion fallen leaves in my yard too while I think about Ephraim and Martha and how it all connects.

Anway, here goes:

The Marriage of Land and Lineage

The transition from the Hillyer/Taylor bloodline to the Parker name is the heart of this story. This land was handed down through three pivotal generations of women:

1. The Source: Hester Hillyer, widow of the Sheriff, passed the estate to her daughters in 1791.

2. The Bridge: Her daughter, Sarah Hillyer, married Oliver Taylor. Their presumed daughter, Catherine Taylor (1792–c. 1875), was the living link to this land.

3. The Union: Catherine Taylor married John Parker (Senior). Under the laws of the time, John became the legal steward of Catherine’s inherited Taylor/Hillyer land. The John Parker Theory: Staten Island Bible records show that John Parker (1789–1860) married Catharine Taylor in 1821.          

                 

When John Parker signed the 1858 deed for an "Estate of Inheritance," he was legally passing on the Hillyer bloodright that Catherine had brought into their marriage to their son, Ephraim Parker. Ephraim, in turn, married Martha Palmer, and together they maintained this ancestral homestead on Morning Star Road.

Below are the players in "Scene I Act III" of this VERY Provisional Family Pedigree:

1. John Hillyer (c. 1716–1775): High Sheriff of Richmond County. (possibly Paige’s 6th-G-Grandfather)

2. Hester Hillyer (d. 1791): Widow of the Sheriff.

3. Sarah Hillyer (1754–1835): Daughter of the Sheriff; Married Oliver Taylor (d. 1791).

4. Catherine Taylor (1792–c. 1875): The bridge of the "Inheritance"; married John Parker.

5. Ephraim Parker (1824–1902): Received the Morning Star Road lot in 1858; Married Martha Palmer.

6. Mary Catherine Parker (1853–1922): Married George Augustus Page.

7. Roy Allan Page (1878–1957): Married Mayme Sue Willeford.

8. Roy Allen Page Jr. (1914–1969): Married Edith Virginia Haley.

9. Margaret Deborah Page (1948–2024): Married David Thomas Brown.

10. Allison Paige Brown (1968–Living): Known to us as Paige Dunham.

Conclusion:

Above: The home of Paige's ancestors Ephraim and Martha (Parker) Palmer in 1874.

The 114 feet of land Ephraim Parker and Martha Palmer called home in 1858 was the exact same soil the High Sheriff defended a century prior. It is a sanctuary preserved by a family that believed the law should serve the household, not the other way around. On Morningstar Road, the character of the Sheriff still lingers in the property lines he refused to let the King's debt-collectors cross.   

                        MARTHA (PALMER) PARKER 

 I just thought having a guy like "The Sheriff" in one's colonial family tree - and one especially out of Revolutionary War Staten Island was a cool thing to share.

I gotta say though - there are rumors that despite all that he may have also been loyal to the Mad King. Indeed, there is a curious note about his son-in-law, Oliver Taylor, (a man who would also be an ancestor of Paige's saying as much in the DAR patriot files. WTF?! :)  ~ Staten Island was a British stronghold during the Revolution. It was very common for families to have one foot in both worlds. ( i.e., that a Loyalist father-in-law and a Patriot son-in-law living on the same land would make for a very tense Thanksgiving dinner)

 See below:

 

We will see where the journey takes us next.

Hey, you Palmers, are you out there? Martha? Anyone?

(Wink!)

P.S: As a foot note to all of this - that is the possibility of any shared connection between Great Migration Immigrant Ancestor Walter Palmer to Paige's ancestor Martha (Palmer) Parker and again with me and cousin Dan Wells - there is a very curious thing. There is a man who is alleged to have migrated from Stonington, Connecticut to New York by the nameof Saxton Palmer - a descendant of  that same Walter Palmer's. 

He's said to have founded the begnnings of the Palmer clan on - wait for it - Staten Island.

Yep. Genealogically stranded on Staten Island. That's me. :)

---

Sources & Bibliography

• Hillyer, Hester. Last Will and Testament of Hester Hillyer, Widow of John Hillyer. Richmond County Surrogate’s Office, NY. Liber A of Wills, p. 48. (1791).

• Parker, John [Senr] to Ephraim Parker. Indenture for Estate of Inheritance. Richmond County Clerk’s Office, NY. Liber 44 of Deeds, p. 524. (1858).

• Morris, Ira K. Morris's Memorial History of Staten Island, New York. Vol. I, pp. 215-217. (1898).

• Beer’s Atlas of Staten Island (1874). Sectional Map of Northfield showing the proximity of Parker, Housman, and Mersereau holdings.

 "BACKWARDS and FORWARDS"

  A Tale of Irish Eyes and the Minister's Wife 

Using a 1864 Deed to Trace Cousins and Defeat a Century-Old Brick Wall

(Author's note: Some things are just better known.)

As always, unedited.

I.

We wannabe genealogists often fall victim to a common, yet limiting, habit: viewing ancestry as a simple, linear path stretching backward through time. We readily assume that the complete truth about our predecessors is waiting just beyond the next "brick wall," requiring only relentless effort to push through.

This happens a lot, I think, when we try to "jump the pond" and attempt to investigate our European roots. It can feel like we'll never find the records needed to connect us to, say, our eighteenth-century Irish ancestors. It’s like no matter how hard we try to push back in time, that brick wall won't come down.

But what if this perspective is flawed? What if the key to truly "going backward" is actually an act of moving forward to find our way there? What if the key to going back "ancestrally" is to take what's known and move down the line forward in time to see if the present just might reveal more about the past and ultimately knock down another brick wall?

Now I admit. In addition to all of this is the curiosity I have about "my cousins" I might have (or have had) on the other side of the Atlantic, that my family lines have been here so long any memory or evidence of my kin on the other side of the pond has disappeared. But what if you could combine these two concepts—that is, look down or forward in time on a collateral line and perhaps (at the same time) reconnect with, say, one's Irish roots?

I don't know about you, but I have never stood at the grave of any of my known kin anywhere in Europe—let alone the Emerald Isle. However, that changed this week for me as I researched the life of my cousin's family, specifically his ancestor Isabella (Stinson) Cummin. Before I could go any further, though, I found myself up against that rather infamous or proverbial brick wall, genealogically speaking, that is.

While I could map everything back to Isabella and to her brother Thomas Stinson (d. 1860), I couldn't get the line to budge back any further. I realized, though, that because Isabella's brother Thomas had died intestate and, more importantly, without issue (children), he had left a pretty solid list of his siblings and other heirs in some pretty complex documents. I wondered if I could sort them out. Would they give me any clues to the older generation—the ones past Thomas and Isabella?

There were so frickn' many!

Not to make excuses, but I'm not that smart. In addition to that, the document images of Thomas Stinson's estate settlement are numerous, written in hard-to-read script, and presented on difficult-to-navigate web pages.

I did have the advantage of an AI old-cursive script reader on FamilySearch, but even navigating that was beyond tedious, trying to match the script to both names and geography, often written phonetically or translated thusly by the AI. Really, with all these people in Thomas’s estate on both sides of the Atlantic, what did I have to go on?

I'd even fed everything I could find into Google's search engine to help me vet out the relationship between three generations spelled out in Thomas Stinson's estate settlement. But in between everyone being called John, Thomas, or James, I gotta say, with Thomas's eight siblings and numerous nieces and nephews, it all got a wee bit confusing. I had to argue with AI about a couple of the relationships amongst the apparent kinsmen in that the AI was gleaning, but I am generally comfortable with what it has proposed about who is related to whom out of the old text. (BTW...AI and I are still arguing over this a bit; however, this is what "we've" agreed on this far, as taken out of the old documents - that I can see anyway.)

BUT then I remembered that I did have something. I had something very specific, too.

I had the full names of a husband and wife. Not only that, but a Presbyterian minister and his wife.

I recalled a certain April 1864 deed among the mix of Thomas’s estate documents. This particular deed referenced:

  "We, the Reverend (Revd.) John Stinson, of the Manse Glendaright, in the County of Tyrone, Ireland, Presbyterian Minister, and Caroline Stinson, otherwise Hamilton, his wife..." 

This grand-nephew of the deceased Thomas provided a perfect anchor point. I began to wonder if there weren't modern-day descendants of "John and Caroline." Would it be possible to learn about the family and previous generations by understanding a later one?

Would they have a record of just who Isabella (Stinson) Cummin's and her eight siblings' parents were?

In truth, "John and Caroline" felt like the only "complete couple" I had to work with. At least they seemed to come with some clues. And I had an actual place in Tyrone County. Those clues are Caroline's maiden name of "Hamilton" and the fact that John was a minister. I did have one other couple in the mix of all this. Thomas and Isabella's sister, Nancy Stinson, married Ephraim McBride, but this led me nowhere fast.

After arguing a bit more with the AI model over exactly where Reverend John Stinson fit into the general pedigree, I decided to give it a go and to see just what was out there among the branches. I posited that if I could find direct descendants of one of Thomas and Isabella's brothers (who led me to his great-nephew, the Reverand John), I might be able to reconstruct and reconnect with existing modern-day family in Tyrone County, Ireland. (The Reverend's direct line descends from Thomas and Isabella's brother, James Stinson (G1), as confirmed by the deeds.)

Hey, it was worth a shot. Especially when I found these two:

 

Above: Final resting place for the Reverend John Stinson and his wife Caroline Hamilton Stinson at the Ballymagrane Presbyterian Church Yard, Aughnacloy, County Tyrone, Ireland. (In the manse of Glendaright (the location of the church), Ballymagrane is a nearby town. Aughnacloy is the main village.) See FindAGrave.com memorial number: 152710296

Yep. That's the Reverend John Stinson and his wife, Caroline Hamilton Stinson.

I knew I had 'em cuz they are the very same people mentioned in that 1864 Power of Attorney.

Winner, winner, chicken dinner.

For the first time in my genealogical life, I was able to look at a researched "American-Irish" connection from over the pond. I was able to look directly at the grave of Isabella (Stinson) Cummins's great-nephew and his wife. These are the graves of my Cousin Dan's Irish cousins. I could even estimate the degree of relationship.

I was getting closer.

II.

There are eight of them.

There are eight submitted family trees that show the Reverend John Stinson and his wife Caroline Hamilton as either the "submitter" or as the "home person." This meant that there are eight possibilities for making connections or learning more about the Stinson family in Ireland. Predictably so, the trees are split about half and half as to whether the submitter is from Ireland or here in the States. The largest issue, though, is that none of them appear to know anything more than I do about the Stinson clan. Only one of them reported back that the father of Reverend John Stinson's father was also named John Stinson  - a first cousin to Isabella (Stinson) Cummin.

At least thus far, any further information about the line has stopped.

          

 

This hasn't stopped me from reaching out across the pond to Ireland to ask any one of them if they know something more. I received a kind reply from one lady in Ireland who said the family tree she's submitted was "only for a neighbor of her mom's" and that she has no more information. Still, a "neighbor of her mom's" meant that the Stinson line - relatives of Thomas Stinson and Isabella (Stinson) Cummin - not to mention the rest of the Stinson gang, still exist. I need to follow up here to see if there is any wiggle room to learn more.

It also hasn't stopped me from creating a provisional pedigree chart to link my Cousin Dan's ancestors to his more recent ones.

The information about Reverend John Stinson has also allowed me to go genealogically forward. He and his wife, Caroline Hamilton Stinson, had three sons, one of whom also left descendants. The most recently traceable of these leads through their son, Rev. Thomas Stinson, who also became a Presbyterian minister. This Thomas moved to New Zealand, where he also had a family. He left behind a daughter, Olivia Caroline Stinson, who passed away in New Zealand in 1966.

So you got a pretty big family here with kinfolk stretching from Ireland to Pennsylvania to New Zealand. I haven't gone much farther than this. I still have a couple of inquiries out, and I'm hopeful for more replies. In the meantime, I will continue to argue with AI over who belongs where in the documents. I mean, when you're dealing with images like this, it's easy (at least for me) to get confused. 

Who'd have thought AI could be so helpful with all of this and also such a pain in the ass? LOL.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not taking AI at face value here. 

Anything it "reports" back to me is just another clue to investigate. Still, it has proven to be a great tool for deciphering so many of these obscurities that any genealogist will face every day. It helps narrow the playing field. In the meantime, I'm glad to bring the Irish family back to this lady who rests here below, and to maybe give her descendants a better feel for their Irish roots - past and present.

               

Above: The broken and barely legible grave of Isabella (Stinson) Cummin, wife of William Cummin Senior, at the Adams Cemetery, Juniata County, Pennsylvania. See FindAGrave Memorial No. 79414950

                

I think this is a good place to close for now. I believe I have brought some peace to a couple of the old ghosts, or at least have told a little bit more of the tale.

Until next time.

PEACE.

Correction: Olivia Caroline Stinson was from Christ's Church NZ and not Auckland as reported above.