more dead-ish ends

It's been a little while since I last posted ... mainly because I haven't had many very productive searches lately.  Same old story ... dig, dig, dig, ooohhhh, splat.  I haven't given up, just making sure I thoroughly research every branch of every tree as much as can be found so I don't end up on a wild goose chase.

Up until not so long ago people were still having huge families with as many as 12 children or more.  Granted, not all of them survived to adulthood, but many did.  Then they had a bazillion kids, who then had their own bazillion kids, etc etc etc.  I expect that's where I'll find Capt Jesse ... hidden among the branches of some obscurely convoluted family tree. 

I haven't found much more on Robert Gray, and I've read almost all I can find on the Grays of the Carolinas.  The fact that I haven't found him is evidence that I obviously haven't read EVERYTHING, so until I do I'll keep on digging.

Loyalist arrivals in NS

Capt Jesse was supposedly born in either North or South Carolina.  Different people say different things and as we know I haven't figured out which is right yet.  There is consistent mention of him being in the Fairforest militia and that of Ninety-six District, both in South Carolina.  Once he was finished as a soldier, he fled to St Augustine, Florida, then from there he moved to Nova Scotia.  He arrived at Shelburne, NS on the spring transport in 1785 (I'm not sure if "spring transport" means the ship was named the Spring or they arrived in the spring.  There were 2 other Grays on that ship, an Isaac Gray (from Pennsylvania) and a Peter Gray (don't know where from).  I've done some poking around on each of them, of course, and have determined that Isaac ended up in Lunenburg, married to Anna Herman.  If Isaac is related to my Grays I'm pretty sure it's not the ones in Capt Jesse's line.  Not directly anyhow.  As for Peter Gray, I haven't found much of anything more on him yet.

Then we have Robert Gray.  There are several Loyalist Robert Grays, so of course first we have to weed out the ones we KNOW are not ours.  Then there are some that we don't have enough information on to make a final decision ...... yet.

The Robert Gray whose signature is shown here was born 7 Sep 1747 in Dunbartonshire, Parish of Kirkentilloch, Scotland.  His parents were Andrew Gray and Jean Gray (cousins, both of the Grays of Lanarkshire).  

** over and over I keep finding all these cousins marrying cousins and again I'm amazed that I don't have 3 arms and a tail

Robert's family was tight with Thomas Hamilton's (of Overton) family ... Capt Jesse's Grays are intermingled with many Hamiltons.  He served under Col Edmund Fanning in the American Revolution, Capt Jesse served under John Fanning.   Robert landed in Shelburne around the same time as Jesse, Isaac and Peter mentioned above.  He moved to PEI in 1786.

There's another Loyalist Robert Gray, a Colonel, who was the paymaster of the militia in Charlestown, SC.  In some of his pay lists we find a number of Grays, including Capt Jesse and his brother Samuel. Then we have a Robert Gray who is known for his "Gray's Observations", written about various events going on at the time.   Are they related?  Are any of these Roberts actually the same person?  I don't know ...... yet.  But that's where I'm focusing right now ... until I have definitive evidence that they are not related, I consider them too coincidental to be anything but.

Connections

As I search I try to be as thorough as I can at every branch of this convoluted tree of mine.  I know Capt Jesse's people are in there somewhere, it's just a matter of figuring out where.  He did a damn good job of wiping away the footprints that would lead anyone from his military service back to his parents, grands, etc.  

Most of the families from about the early 1900s and back had many kids ... often more than 10, some with the same or similar names even within the same family.  That makes for a lot of spouses, children and inlaws.  The branches just keep spreading the further along I go.  

Many times I'll be working my way through a branch and I get lost ... no idea how I got there, so I pick a name and click "view relationship to me" for a little perspective and I get something like this:

"wife of grandson of husband of aunt of husband of 1st great grand niece of husband of mother"

... maybe just a tad off track, you think?  But I am convinced that this is the way to find him so I'll just keep on filling in the names until I find THE name.

Tragic ends

Been reading a lot of death certificates and records lately.  You can find a lot of information in them that isn't necessarily in other records ... like parents' names (including mother's maiden name), birth & death dates, spouses, children ... and if it's from a list in a death registration book you can also see who lived nearby, since they usually list by area.  Often they also list the person's middle name, which is also very helpful to help discern from others born around the same time.  

I'm getting used to the way they list cause of death, sometimes what they call it isn't always what we would call it now.  Like "consumption" was tuberculosis, "dropsy" was encephalitis, "phthisis" was wasting away due to tuberculosis, "dyspepsia" was often misdiagnosed as bad heartburn but was actually heart attack symptoms.

It's very sad when I'm going down a list and I see a whole family wiped out due to typhoid fever, tuberculosis, small pox ..... makes me grateful that I live in a world where many of these old diseases are either extinct or very very rare.

A quick peek around the Mayflower

I had learned a few years back from my aunt that we had family on the Mayflower.  No Grays, of course, that would be way too easy ... but other family that eventually merged in with the Grays.  The first one we found was Stephen Hopkins, my 10th great grandfather, through Hannah West (married Jeremiah Gray, grandson of Capt Jesse). 

 

So there's one.  Then there's James Chilton and Edward Winslow, my 11th great grandfathers.

Also, William Brewster, my 12th great grandfather through Sarah Moulton (wife of Capt Jesse).

John Billington descends to Mary Ritchie, who married Thomas Gray (grandson of Capt Jesse).

Peter Browne, Francis Eaton, Priscilla Mullins & John Alden descend to Lottie Jestings (my great grandmother, married to Reginald Gray).

And then we have Francis Cooke, my 10th great grandfather.

and on and on and on ...

I know there are more, I just got tired of looking.  Basically there were 120 people on the Mayflower, they all got cozy in Plymouth, Massachusetts and ended up making a bazillion descendants all inter-related, many of whom worked their way down to me.

It really is too bad there were no Grays on the Mayflower ... 

#$%$@#&%$!!!!!!!!!

There are SO MANY frickin Grays in history -- it's nearly impossible to sort them out as to who goes with whom!  And many of them had a bazillion kids from multiple spouses -- it's like rabbits breeding!!!!!

ok ... rant over.  back to work.

Feels like home

I haven't lived in Plymouth, NS for almost 24 years.  In fact, I've been in Vancouver, BC for the last 10 of those.  I've always prided myself on being very versatile, like the idiom: "Home is where you lay your hat".  Things can change quickly, often unplanned, sometimes for the good, other times not so much, but wherever I am is home at the moment. 

Don't get me wrong, I love love love my new city, but I do get a bit of melancholy thinking about where my hat used to lay and all the rich Gray history surrounding it.  Next time I visit I'll have to set aside a full day to go cemetery hopping.  I love cemeteries.  I don't even have to know any of the residents, I just love to walk among the stones, read the inscriptions, notice the flowers left by loved ones.  Some people find cemeteries creepy and full of death .... I find them peaceful and full of history.  I need to start maintaining a list of who is buried in which cemetery and get some good photos.  There are a number of NS cemeteries that are not documented at all, Plymouth being one of them.

Today was a day of bmd's ... reading birth/marriage/death records.  Most days have a bit of everything, but today I decided to stick to those and see if I found any not-so-obvious trails.  I was perusing a particular list of births in 1867, 100 years before I was born (ok, 99 years if you want to be nit-picky about it).  Scrolling through the lists of names I found Gray, Sims, Johnson, Hatfield, Stuart, Allen, Robbins, Ryder, Trefry, and many more ..... even after all this time, just reading this list sent me home.  I grew up around most of these names, or hearing of them from years past.  Trefry's had the Arcadia Meat Market for years.  My dad's best friend and neighbor as a child was a Johnson.  I was engaged to a Hatfield at one time.  My aunt married a Sims. 

The two florists in Yarmouth were  Crosby's and Robbin's.  I could go on and on, but my point is how very cool it is to run down a list of names and be able to say "I know that name ... and that one ... and that one ..." often with an anecdote or bit of information attached to each one.  This is Main St in Yarmouth.  The town clock there on the left was built by my cousin, Randy Forbes.  The building on the corner with the large turret at the top was Fitzer's Fine Clothes, now a tourist shop I believe.  One of the Florist shops was near that.  That's how I remember it anyhow.  Now, of course, it looks quite different.  There's that melancholy again.