Hi WikiTreers,
Our first week of the 2022 WikiTree Challenge exceeded all expectations.
Our guest star was Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia. What could WikiTreers uncover for him in just one week? Quite a bit, as it turned out! Check out the fun highlights video and please help us share it on social media.
Challenge participants added 949 profiles to his branches. There were 95 direct ancestors and 305 nuclear relatives of ancestors added. Altogether, more than 56 members made 5,112 edits to his ancestor profiles. Many participants did research, while others worked on profile narratives, added categories, looked up articles and participated in other ways.
Team Captain: Christine Daniels.
MVP: Maddy Hardman
Bounty Hunters:
Here are all the WikiTreers who helped.
Highlights
“He Cannot Live” and “Fatally Stabbed” declared Buffalo, New York, newspaper headlines that genealogists at WikiTree uncovered while researching the family tree of Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales. The articles revealed a near tragedy that involved two of Wales’ great-great uncles, Henry and Edward Lewenicht. While out walking one evening in the summer of 1895, the two brothers were crossing Genesee Street in Buffalo when Edward collided with a man named John Schoen who was riding a bicycle. Both men went down. Schoen assumed the collision was intentional and drew a knife.
"Like gladiators they battled, one bent on revenge," proclaimed the Buffalo Courier on 27 June 1895. They struggled until Edward “with a groan and gasp sank to the pavement.” His jugular vein had been severed. Edward’s brother, Henry Lewenicht, came to his defense and was stabbed in the ribs by Schoen. As the headlines indicate, Edward was not expected to live, and yet, miraculously, he did.
Surprisingly, this was not the only knife battle uncovered in Wales’ family tree by the volunteer researchers. On 11 October 1936 in Huntsville, Alabama, Wales’ great-grandfather Clarence Graviet was involved in a deadly fight with a man by the name of Frank Hicks. The brawl left both men with serious wounds. Hicks was hospitalized with a fractured skull and several knife wounds. Wales’ great-grandfather did not survive the fight. Graviet died from a knife wound in his back.
Researchers uncovered another set of parallel tragedies: Two of Wales’ relatives suffered unfortunate accidents involving trains. As a young man in 1898, Henry Kimpel, Wales’ great uncle, was seriously injured falling from a New York Central Railroad train in Buffalo. More tragically, in 1925, Wales’ great-great uncle Lafayette Brooks was “alighting” from a train in Mississippi when he lost his footing and fell between cars. He died from his injuries 10 days later.
The WikiTree researchers uncovered more than just tragedies. Overall, they were able to add 949 family members for Wales as well as connect him to the nearly 25 million people who are already connected to each other on WikiTree. They created and improved profiles for boat builders, paymasters, newspaper editors, musicians and more. Further, they were able to share with Wales that beyond the English and Irish roots he knew he had, he also had family that came to the US from Germany, France and Scotland, and close relatives in Australia.
An Alabama native, Wales learned that he has deep roots in his home state. His third great-grandfather, Thomas Jefferson Wales, was born in Indiana but by 1850 was living with his wife Mary (Eaves) Wales, in Limestone County. Mary was an Alabama native, born in 1821. Thomas was a farmer and owned land in Limestone that doubled in value from 1850 to 1870, from $400 to $800. Thomas and Mary are both buried in Sylone Cemetery in Elkmont, Limestone, Alabama.
Eliza Ann Emmaline Matlock, Wales’ third great-grandmother, spent most of her life in Limestone County, Alabama, as well. Born in 1830, she married young, at the age of 14, and had several children with her first husband, Wales’s ancestor Laban Brock. He died when their youngest was just two years old. She went on to marry James Dungy with whom she had one child. Sadly, James, also a Limestone native, was killed in action serving with the 54th Regiment of the Alabama Infantry during the Civil War, leaving Eliza a widow once again.
Wales’ second great-grandfather, William Henry Gravitt, was born in Monrovia, Alabama, in 1840 and died there in 1912. He enlisted for the Confederates in April 1861. In 1862, he was captured during the Battle of Island Mound but was later released and thereafter served in the 54th Alabama Regiment.
One special find involved William’s father, Wales’ third great-grandfather, Jesse Gravitt. In 1971 a Mrs. Walter Johnston purchased an antebellum house on Gaboury Lane in Huntsville, Alabama. In the house she found a small book entitled The Constitutions of the United States of America, printed in 1825. In the book were family birth records, practice ink writings, number problems, and even drawings made by the Gravitts. These pages provide a window into Wales’ ancestors’ lives.
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