Monday, January 27, 2014

A huge loss ...

Until about 1994 Grays lived in Plymouth.  As in Yarmouth County, Nova Scotia, not the rock in Massachusetts, although we were there too, but I digress.

I grew up in Plymouth with my sisters, cousins and grandparents all right there.  My dad was born and raised there.  His dad, Keith Sr,  was born and raised there.  His grandfather, Edgar, and great-grandfather, Benjamin, all the way to his great-great-grandfather, Jesse jr lived there in Plymouth.  For anyone who may not know, Plymouth is a very small community ... like just a few km (5 maybe?) and a population of probably no more than about 200.  Everybody literally knew everybody else and many were related somewhere along the line.

 My dad drove the school bus, just as Grampy had, and Uncle Gary did carpentry, but when they weren't out working their "regular jobs" they ran Gray Bros farm.  We had some cattle, a couple of ponies now and then, but mainly we grew and sold potatoes and turnips.  All of us kids spent many summer afternoons picking potatoes when the time came.  As the oldest I sometimes got to steer the tractor.  One year when they were plowing a field, for some reason the plow was too light and wasn't making deep enough furrows so I was used as "dead weight" to keep it down.  Doesn't every 13 year old girl want to be used to weight things down?  hmmm no.  Anyhow, I perched there on the cross beam of the plow as it was pulled up and down the rows.  Kinda hard on the butt but once we found an old seat cushion for me to sit on it wasn't too bad.  In this picture on the left the cattle would have been in the pasture in the front, gardens were out behind the barn.
 



There's Grammy on the left, Grampy smoking his pipe on the right.






There was always an old wooden wagon wheel on a post just outside their back door.  We would all climb on and whoever could reach the ground (yep, usually me) would push with 1 foot to make it spin.  I don't recall anyone really ever getting hurt on it, though I'm sure someone went flying off of it at some time or another, it provided us with hours of dizzy spinny fun.

And now I come to the point of this post.  Last week while talking to a friend about  grandparents and when we were kids I had told her about how I grew up next door to Grammy and Grampy and every evening after dinner I would go over there for a few hours. Grammy and I would talk and talk, do crosswords, watch tv, knit, sometimes she'd tell me stories of when she was young.  (Grampy was gone by then)
The next morning, Jan 23, 2014, I got a text from my sister.  The old house had burned down in the night.  Apparently nobody was living there at the time, arson is not suspected, it was a total loss.  
I'm still coming to terms with it.  I look at the pictures from the newspaper article, and then pictures of it the way I remember it.  I just doesn't seem real.  I know it'll hit me sooner or later, and then I'll grieve.




Sunday, January 19, 2014

Not quite gold, but getting there

I had mentioned in my last post about a Samuel Gray I had found buying slaves in Florida in 1786.  After a bit more digging around and of course reading reading reading I do believe this is our Samuel, brother of Capt Jesse.  

I've been going back to the reading on Mary Postell.  She had gotten a certificate of freedom at Gov Patrick Tonyn's state house where Mary Postell got her certificate of freedom.  In 1786 Tonyn sold several of his slaves, 5 went to Samuel.   An Alexander Gray was also involved in a lot of slave stuff in the area at that time, still looking for more on him, not sure yet if he's one of ours or not.  Then in  1817 there is a triennial registry of slaves in Dominica showing a Samuel Gray with 7 slaves. A similar list from 1820 lists Samuel Gray with an increase of 10 (total 43) and decrease of 29 slaves (some of these have the same name as some he bought from Tonyn).  

So, no concrete evidence yet, but it's getting there.  It has crossed my mind though, that if and when I do link them all up and find the roots where Capt Jesse came from ... what then?

Thursday, January 9, 2014

Ashamed and outraged

Lately I've been back to focusing on Capt Jesse's brother Samuel.  Besides the information on the two of them in the war, the only other obvious mention of Samuel is in regards to the slave woman, Mary Postell.  In my searching I've spent a lot of time delving into slave records, stories, lots of information out there and none of it good. 

Some people say how "it was another time, not like things are today and we can't judge".  Yes, it was a different world then, but people were still people and it never fails to hit me like a punch in the gut to read the accounts of what these people went through.  Just today I was reading a list of a sale of slaves in East Florida in 1786.  Samuel is mentioned as a purchaser in this list.  I'm not sure yet if this is my Samuel, but it's a possible start.  



Sales of Slaves, Property of Major General Patrick Tonyn.
1796
Purchasers
Negroes Names
Appraised Value
Sold For
Sept 15
Samuel Gray
Piero, Charlotte, Johnny, Bella & Harry
225
225




There was a Pero in Nova Scotia around the same time as the Mary Postell stuff.  I don’t know if just a common name or if maybe it could be the same guy.  Reading through the list I get this overwhelming feeling of humiliation and shame … these were PEOPLE …. appraised as if they were a horse or wagon.  In this particular list most of them sold at or above their appraised value, some to other slave owners, some just for cash.  There are a few on the list that were appraised at $0.  How do you put a value on a person?  And how do you justify someone being worth absolutely nothing?
Yes, it was  another time.  Yes, things have changed a lot since then.  But neither of these facts change the hard truth that it was just plain wrong.  
It’s when I get to these parts of my research that I just feel ashamed and outraged that this was my family.












Monday, January 6, 2014

Brand new year, same old stuff

Every time I log onto my computer or go researching at the library I have the hope that today will be the day I find something great.  I've had some small victories and they can add up to be big together, but I'm still waiting to hit the jackpot.  

I had seen a family tree someone posted on geni.com that showed Capt Jesse as part of William Gray and Lydia Anderson's family.  William was son of John Gray and Agnes Rose (McGowan?).  John was son of John Gray and Elizabeth (Parsons?).  I've dug around in that particular tree a bunch of times and William/Lydia do indeed have a son Jesse, born 1766.  The dates are plausible.  He had a brother named John Samuel.  But as much as I would love to have finally discovered where Jesse came from, I have my doubts that this is it.  Yes, the dates are good, but there are a few problems.  

First of all, there are no other names in this tree that carry on down past Jesse.  His descendants are consistently intermingled with a particular group of other names, I believe I mentioned this in my August 2 post.  Some of those names include Morton, Moulton, Mood, Goodwin, Andrews.  This other tree has none of them.

Secondly, William and Lydia's family is Irish, where Jesse was a Scot.

And thirdly, William wasn't a tory, where Capt Jesse and his brother Samuel were very much so. 

 I'm not ruling it out completely though, I just have no proof one way or the other yet.  Anyhow, like I said, it would be great if this is right, but I have my doubts.  I'm hoping this other researcher can show me some solid proof that this is it; in the meantime I keep digging.