52 Ancestors Week 4 - Invite to Dinner [closed]

Question

AJC - This week is "Invite to Dinner." Which ancestor would you most want to invite to dinner? Do you have a story of a memorable dinner with an ancestor? Is there a special recipe that's been handed down?

Who would you invite to Dinner of all your ancestors and relatives? And WHY?

Comments

oops this needs to be an answer

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I can think of dozens of relatives who are no longer here that I would like to sit and chat with over dinner, as I have countless questions for them. But if I had to narrow it down, I would invite my great grandparents, William Stewart and his wife Alice. I know almost nothing about their families. It would be nice to hear what tales they could tell.

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I would like to invite my maternal grandmother to dinner.  She passed away in 1943 at the age of 21 when my mom was only 6 weeks old.  There aren't that many people alive today that remember her.  All of her siblings along with my grandpa are deceased.  My mom and I do have her diaries so we were able to glean a little of what she was like when she was younger.

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/White-29333

EDIT: Is there anyway someone can move this to the answer section instead of comment?

EDIT #2: Moved to the answer section.  Thanks Robynne.

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I think you can repost this as an answer. but I am still counting this.

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I would invite all my brick wall relatives or those there is debate about. The table would consist of me to take notes AND My great grand mother Otillie Priebe Lange b. In Prussia in 1860d in Oregon; my great grand father way back Thomas Warren Sr. Of Maryland and Virginia To get his wives names, my great grandfather x 6 Thomas Montgomery to find out where he is buried in Ohio,  my ggrandmother x 7 Ann Bennett of PA to find her maiden name, my ggreat grandfather John Redwine to untangle my GA, AR and TX Redwine line, and finally My great grandfther x 7 Henry Collins d. 1793 of Derry Mifflin co PA to find out his wife Rachels maiden name, his Parents, her parents and all that detail needed.

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Week 4 and for what? I was 4 years to late in finding my bio father. How much I would enjoy having him over and cooking my ex wife's favorite... spaghetti omelette!!

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Week 4 in the 2018 challenge...

Answer 1

I'm currently working with Henderson-2297 to help identify a puzzle https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:Henderson-2297_Brickwall_DDW

So, we have identified two of my ancestor's sisters Munday-701 and Munday-593 emigrated to New Zealand in the early 1900s. They were obviously a close family and researching them has pushed me out of my comfort zone ( i.e. England). So I would love to sit them down at dinner and ask them why they emigrated to New Zealand, and what happened to their other sister Munday-699 ?

Even more so, I'd love to get their sons to reveal which one of them is the actual progenitor of my distant "cousins" in New Zealand.

Comments

Another relative I would really love to have dinner with is another ancestor's sister Rufus-20

I really want to know what drove a young woman to leave her husband after a few years of marriage and emigrate alone to Australia on the other side of the world, leaving her family behind in England in 1863. 

Was she really alone when she emigrated or was she with another man and had plans of living as a married couple away from those who knew she was still married. I assume her new "husband" knew she was married as they didn't actually get married in Australia, but her children were led to believe that they had married - her descendants had no idea about her real husband back in England.

I think she must have been extremely brave to go against the expectations of society at that time.

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Great guests with interesting mysteries, you have there, Michelle.

Answer 2

John Daniels and Jane Wootton

For week number four I have chosen to invite my two times great-grandparents John Daniels and Jane Wootton to dinner. There are a few mysteries I would like answered about their lives, and it would be good to chat with them. Information on John and Jane was my first significant find in genealogy. I went to the local Family History Centre and with the help of a co-worker there began my search. The background information that I had was from a baptismal certificate of my great grandfather, which had his parent’s names listed: John Daniels and Jane Wootton. I started out by finding their marriage record.

John and Jane were married 9 November 1839 in Corsham Parish, Wiltshire, England his profession being a labourer. John’s father was Robert, a soldier who had possibly fought in the Napoleonic war. I heard a family story about a watch, which may have been worn by Robert in that war, which he passed down to John.

 John and Jane’s first child, George Turner Daniels was born 30 May 1840 in Corsham. At least three more children were born to this union, Sarah Ann, Mary Jane, William, and Frederic. Frederic was born in France, and possibly Sarah, Mary and William, but I have no documentation at this time other than census info that changes every ten years. The family shows up in the 1840 England census where John is listed as Joseph. I am not sure if that was his middle name or just put down wrong. They live with Jane’s Father in his home at Thingley Bridge, a small settlement just outside of Corsham. The same person who was a witness at their wedding also is living there, William Webb.

I believe John took his family to France to help work on the railroad building as the French had hired a British company MacKenzie and Brassey. From France, John took his family and found his way to Canada. The remaining information is from family oral history.

John began working on building the railroad in Ontario and was driving an engine to haul rock to Copetown where it was used for the railbed. The problem at Copetown was they were building over quicksand, and it took a lot of rock to fill the hole. One day when John was driving up to the hole the engine overshot, jumping over the end of the track. Both the engine and John were lost in the quicksand. My aunt wrote that young Frederic would always run to meet his dad when John came home from work, but this day John did not come home. Within a few months, Jane died of a broken heart and the family was separated.

This was the spring of 1854, and I do not know what happened to George. Sarah went to live with her uncle George and aunt Rebecca. Mary went to live with aunt Rebecca’s brother, Richard Quance and his wife, Alice. William and Frederic were taken to the Hamilton Orphan’s Asylum.

It would be very interesting to have dinner with John and Jane, and hear all the stories of their lives. What it was like to travel back then when trips took weeks and not hours. When pulling up roots and moving far away to a distant land held the promise of a brighter future. How I was a result of their love so long ago.

Comments

Very intriguing little mystery you have there, Dennis. Thank you.

Answer 3

I would like to invite so many people to dinner that its took me a long time to decided who I want to talk to most. I have decided that I really would like to meet both my grandmothers. They had both died before I was born and I was never told much about them. My maternal grandmother was Emily Gyte https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Gyte-1. My paternal grandmother was Louisa Shephard https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Shephard-292.

Then I would invite a couple of brick wall ancestors. They are my great grandfather William Williams https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Williams-47597 and my 2x great grandfather John Spencer https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Spencer-13664. I want to know more about who their parents were.

Finally I would invite my great grandfather Frank Count. https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Count-17. I have a lot of questions for him. I found him as a ten year old stable boy placed with a family in Newmarket, England. I want to ask if they treated him well and if managed to go home to see his parents. I want to ask him about his brother John who was listed as dumb in the 1861 census. Then I would ask him what he was doing out in the early hours of the morning in December 1872 when he witnessed a police officer being threatened with a gun. I also want to know how a groom from Newmarket ended up working as a coal miner in Yorkshire. I would also like to know if he kept in touch with his family in Newmarket after he moved to Yorkshire.

Answer 4

I would invite my grandmother, [[Vachon-192|Helen Vachon Schrader]] to dinner and I'd have her show me how to make her infamous noodles. She would make the dough every Sunday and set the cut noodles out to dry while she went to Mass. They were delicious! I've tried to make my own and they just don't quite match (I think I make them too thick.)  We'd have a nice chat over tea as well! She also made outstanding pies (cherry and gooseberry were my favorites).

Answer 5

I'm going to go a different route and talk about the most memorable dinner with family:  Thanksgiving, 1985.

It was one of the few times that everyone from my mother's immediate family were gathered together under one roof, at my Aunt Trish's house in Sumter, South Carolina.  My great-grandparents, my grandparents, three aunts and their respective partners, my parents, and my brother and me (the only grandchildren at the time).  The adults sat at a giant round table, and my brother and I were banished to a card table nearby.  So my Grandma sat with us, put up a couple of candles, and called it the Table of Honor.  Everyone laughed and told jokes, and after the dinner, we all sat down and watch Christmas movies.

I miss my Grandma.  I wish I could have dinner with her again.

Comments

Sounds like a memorable Thanksgiving!

I miss my Grammie, too. We have the memories, though. :-)

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Beautiful story and memory for you to have of your Grandma

Answer 6

Here's mine for this week. I chose Rachel Boughter Dilliplane - one of my paternal great-grandmothers. 

blog post

profile

Now off to read what other's have posted for this!

Comments

What a wonderful story  I would love to hear the story about the hot air balloon landing as well Oh I bet that would be a tail. 

Answer 7

I have many that I would love to invite to dinner. Starting with my own grand parents who I miss dearly all of which lived long enough to see me into adult hood.

I have ancestors that came with the Great Puritan Migration (many actually) that I would love to invite to dinner, the women especially.

The ancestor I picked was a descendant of the great migration as well.

Peleg Sweet, https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Sweet-3571, was one of the early pioneers to venture from Connecticut to the wilds of Lake Erie and the Western Reserve in Ashtabula County, Ohio. I am not sure if he would be considered notable, but he sure was a man of renown in Ashtabula. I have heard his name and his son's name mentioned in the family many times but until I worked up his profile I did not know how he lived his life or how others thought of him and his wife Mary.

i would so love to know what it was like to sell your business and land in the civilized world of Connecticut to take your whole brood or good part of it to the wilds of the Western Reserve, which at that point was dense woods and marsh lands. What might have prompted him to do so. How was it for his wife going from refinement to privation and hard work?

So many questions to ask , I might have them spend the night and have breakfast too!

Answer 8

This week's challenge has proven to be quite difficult.  I've mulled and mulled over who I would want to invite to dinner.  A few came to mind for specific reasons. A grandfather I'd love to see again since the last time I had dinner with him, I wasn't feeling well, and it was not a good visit, and I was haunted for a long time after his death just a few weeks later. A relative of my husband's who discovered Pluto, a distant cousin on my Mom's side who I mentioned before as having lived to be over 100 - she had a recipe published in the paper.  Perhaps each of my immigrant ancestors to find out what prompted them to leave their homelands.  Maybe I'll just have a party (reunion) and invite them all!

I think though, I would like to invite my 2nd-great-grandmother, Eliza BUSH.  I haven't yet fully researched her beyond discovering, through other researchers, who her parents are said to be.   She married Richard HAAS in New York and had two children, Richard Henry and Minnie E., then moved to Michigan where they had Fred.  In Michigan, her husband joined the Union Army and fought in the Civil War, in which he died as a POW at Salisbury, NC just before the war ended.

At dinner, I'd find out about her parents, and grandparents and siblings.  Did they get along, were they good people?  What was their relationship like with her, with her husband?  Why did they leave New York to go to Michigan?  She was only 31 when her husband died, how did that impact the family? The children were 9, 7, and 2.  How hard was that?  I can only imagine!  Why did she not remarry?  What were her fondest memories of her husband? What did she know of her husband's family? Maybe he should be invited too? [Bush-5153] [Haas-2360]

Answer 9

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks   Week 4: Invite to Dinner

Well if you all have been reading my post you know by now that the skill grammatically correct written language is not my long suite.  I have another confession to make. Cooking is not a genetically inherited trait.  If it is it skipped this generation.  So with that in mind I offer an apology to my Ancestors who are invited by for dinner.  

 

As with most who are doing this challenge, I would love time to chat and have a meal with my brickwall ancestors, but which one.  There are so many.  

1. Martha (unknown) Gilbert and Mr Gilbert  my third great grandmother

2. Alexander and Lucinda Samples  my fourth great grandparents   

3. Robert A. Samples and Mary Ann Walker Samples my fourth great grandparents

4. Nancy Unknown McTheny and Mr McTheny

 

Since I have to make a choice I think it would be to have dinner with Martha Gilbert and Nancy McTheny.  Both of these women are total mysteries to me.  

 

Let's start with Martha who shows up in the 1850 Census for Lumpkin County, Georgia with her sons, Francis Marion Gilbert, Simeon Gilbert and Jasper Norman Gilbert.  Where is her spouse?  Has  he passed on, did he just up and leave or was he even there to start with.  DNA for this line of Gilbert sons match with a Haney line from Virginia and the Carolinas.  So this brings into question who was their father? Was he a Gilbert or did he just take that name, or was it a Hanely and Martha moved and took the name Gilbert upon her arrival in Lumpkin County?   Was she an unwed mother?  So many questions so few clues.

 

My dinner table discussion with Nancy would be very similar.  I do have two clues that offers some glimmer into where and who Nancy was.  Yet I have not found the original document yet. These clues was posted on Ancestry.com by webe99 originally shared this on 02 Sep 2017. These are Court records from Alleghany County, Virginia dated 20 Jan 1839 & 30 Jan 1839.  You can view them here on my Pintrest site.   The first dated 20 Jan 1839 is  the court ordering Nancy to appear in court to defend why her two sons Lorenzo and John (who were old enough to bind out) should not be bound out. Her son Oliver was too young at the time to be bound out. The second dated 30 Jan 1839 shows a John Matheny is bound to be a shoe maker and  Lorenzo Dow to be a Tailor.  

 

My first question to her would be is this you.  If it was then the next question would be how did you feel when strangers calling their self a Court took your sons and bound them out to others ?  I would be in a rage if the Courts ordered my children to be bound out.  You are grieving the loss of your husband, (oh and by the way what was his name)  and now you have to suffer the loss of your sons.  This brought home to me the realization that women were not considered equal to men in that time frame.

 

I would be proud to tell Nancy and Martha that today we stand beside our male partners.  We are not subject to arbitrary rules dished out by society.  We have “Come a Long way Baby”   Though when I look at the hardship they endured on a daily basis in the early and mid 1800’s I wonder if they had more gumption and strength than most of us today.  I think they did.   I am proud to be descended from this long line of strong women, even if they refuse to give up their secret past.  

 

#52ancestors

 

Comments

Well done Mel.

You are now all caught up and the next prompt should be released tomorrow - Monday 29 Jan.

Answer 10

I would like to invite Madam Pauline Hunter of Hunterston, 30th Clan Chief, to dinner at Hunterston House so she can tell me all about the filming of British films over the past years, especially The Outlander.

Comments

Hi Carol, that would be interesting! Speaking of Outlander, I often wonder if and how Tobias Menzies might be connected to 2x great grandmother Mary Menzies!

Answer 11

I would like my great-uncle William O. Perry to invite ME to dinner!  “Uncle Bill” died a few years before I was born so I never got to meet him.  But I grew up hearing stories about him and his cooking from my father.

As a young man around 1900, Bill headed West from Michigan and didn't settle down until he reached Hoquiam,Washington on the Pacific Coast.  The Census records confirm the family story that he cooked for lumberjacks as his occupation in 1920 was cook at a logging camp.  In 1910 his occupation had been cook in a hotel at Hoquiam. He also was a long time fireman for the city of Hoquiam listing that as his occupation on his World War One draft registration and he was living and working at the firehouse in 1930 and 1940.  

Apparently contact with the family back in Michigan was a bit sporadic over the next forty or so years. However by the mid-1940's Bill was back in touch with my grandfather's family which was fortunate for my father who had gotten terribly sick after being drafted into the Navy during World War Two.  He was eventually sent to the hospital at Farragut Naval Training Station near C'oeur d'Alene, Idaho to recuperate. 

I don't know how Uncle Bill made the 400 mile trip from Hoquiam to C'oeur d'Alene in 1945 with gas rationing in effect, possibly he went by train.  But, he showed up, collected his terribly underweight nephew whom he had never met before and took him home to “fatten him up”.  I'm not sure if the dinner plate size buckwheat pancakes my father liked to make for weekend breakfasts were direct descendants from Uncle Bill's logging camp days, but like to think they might have been.   

Answer 12

I'd invite my Scottish great great grandmother Mary Kennon. https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Kennon-258

I've written about her here. https://feetuptimetothink.blogspot.co.nz/2018/01/52-ancestors-week-4-invite-to-dinner.html

Comments

Love the hint, more about that next week, knowing that "next week" will involve the census records!!  LOL  Thanks for participating, Fiona.

Answer 13

My first thought was for my grandmother, who died at age 47 when my father was still a child. Just to know how she was in person, hear her voice... all these things.

But she already was my week 2 entry. The good thing with this prompt is we can invite anyone we like - it's our dinner! So I'm inviting Robert Crausaz - my grandmother's cousin, who emigrated from Switzerland to Canada in 1913, and later moved to Ohio.

The first time I was made aware of Robert's existence was when looking through family papers - one was a notarial act listing all the heirs of a pair of distant cousins in Switzerland. These cousins were two unmarried sisters, who had managed to amass a tidy sum (they were very frugal), which after they died was shared between the descendants of their uncles and aunts. My father is a grandson of one of their aunts. Robert was a son of one of their uncles. I was very intrigued by the mention of a cousin who lived in America, and then, I forgot.

Several years later when making contact with a cousin from Switzerland - a first, my ancestors left Switzerland in 1905 and never came back - I was of course very curious to ask her about Robert. Yes, she knew about him. She had been intrigued too, and she had written to him, and he had replied.

Robert was born in 1890. He had trained for a job in the railway, but before he could be hired they found that he could not do the job he had planned because of a small defect in his vision of colours. He met someone who had emigrated to Canada at about the same time, and quickly decided to try his luck there. He reached Canada on 1 March 1913, went to the station and asked for a ticket to "the West". The clerk said there was a train to Winnipeg about to leave. "Is it West?" "Oh yes", the clerk answered. And that's how he arrived in Winnipeg.

And that's only the beginning, he held different jobs, graduated, moved to Ohio, was a teacher in Pennsylvania, and later a farmer in Ohio... So I'm inviting him for three reasons:

- He has lots of things to say and stories to tell;

- He had the good taste of marrying descendants of the Willson family, and ALL my connections hinge on that

- He is the reason I joined WikiTree in the first place, because when I found him here I contacted the profile manager with my side of the story (our information makes for both sides of the Atlantic). I really owe him an invitation for this !

Comments

Great story Isabelle. Thanks for that.

Answer 14

As you said, brick walls....

I would love to meet my great great grandmother, Sarah Elizabeth Stewart and ask her who fathered her son, Luther!   I am sure there most be some scandalous story to be told.  Luther was born out of wedlock. No records have yet been found to determine his parentage.  Luther was raised with the surname of  Stewart, his mother's maiden name. My Stewart line ends with him, but he is actually not a Stewart (except for the genes he received from his mother) and therefore none of his descendants are either (i.e. my grandfather, my mother, etc).  I hired an Ancestry Pro genealogist to try to track down who his father might have been.  It was narrowed down to several names, but most likely to a Comer line from South Carolina.  So come on, Grandma, you can tell me!

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Stewart-13582 (Sarah)

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Stewart-13573 (Luther)

Comments

Have you tried DNA, Carolyn?

A number of DNA enthusiasts here at Wikitree all tell me that DNA can often find the right surname and sometimes even the right family for you.

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Yes, that's how the Ancestry Pro narrowed down the names.  I submitted my DNA, and found two second cousins, who were each from a different child of Luther's (as was I), who agreed to let me submit their DNA also.  The Pro used the three sets of DNA to determine Luther's father was most likely a Comer.

Answer 15

For Week 4 I asked my family what this prompt "Invite to Dinner" meant to them.  All everyone could talk about was food!  they remembered great dishes that our ancestors were known for.... Hilma Karlberg Schelin for her cornbread and red cabbage, Jane Wight Schelin for her Christmas Eve rib roast and later, when Christmas Eve was more casual, for lasagna. Aunt Mabel Ackerson Erickson's German chocolate cake, were all highlighted.  Seems I come from a long line of great cooks!

 

52_Ancestors_Week_4

Answer 16

I wouldn't just invite one or two ancestors to dinner.  I would invite every single one in my tree who died as a small child.  We would have a wonderful children's party with all their favourite foods and games - the noise level would be unbelievable!  There would be an abundance of love and happiness throughout that party - and no grownups to say "behave, now" or "wait 'til your father gets home" LOL

Well, I'm a grownup - or so I'm told...

Comments

It's so sad to find so many deaths of young children when researching family lines.  Such a wonderful vision!

Answer 17

I would like to invite my maternal grandmother to dinner.  She passed away in 1943 at the age of 21 when my mom was only 6 weeks old.  There aren't that many people alive today that remember her.  All of her siblings along with my grandpa are deceased.  My mom and I do have her diaries so we were able to glean a little of what she was like when she was younger.

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/White-29333

Answer 18

I would reconstruct the 1964 dinner that my mother, due to misplaced pride, was unable to host.

In 1964 my father went to a physics conference in Paris. This turned into a family trip, which then expanded to my mother and sister and I spending 3 months driving around Europe in a VW bus (which was subsequently shipped to the US).  You really COULD live on "$5 a day"- for all three, by staying in campsites.

My mother paid for our  part of the trip with money she had "saved from the housekeeping", and from working as a substitute teacher.

The trip ended, after the conference and my father's return to the US, with 2 weeks in England, mostly visiting relatives.

At the end, my mother wanted to host a dinner for "all" her relatives, but did not have enough money left.  She hemmed and hawed about asking my father to wire some money for the dinner, but decided that he would
"never let her forget" her inability to stay within her budget.  So the dinner never happened.

When we got back the US, she was furious to discover that my father had bought a new motorcycle "because the money was just building up in the bank".

So the dinner party would include 

My mother (Freda (Pilcher) Gunn (1924 - 1975) https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Pilcher-358

My grandmother Wilda Emily (Brown) Pilcher (1891 - 1967)  cook in "stately homes" before her marriage https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Brown-61410

Aunty Margaret (Pilcher) Irwin (1925 - 2000) https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Pilcher-372

My great aunts / uncles

Aunty Gladys - Gladys Alberta Brown (1893 - 1985), ladies maid to Lady Granard, never married  https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Brown-67827

Aunty Freda Elfrida Elsie (Brown) Page (1896 - 1976) also in service before her marriage https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Brown-67968

Uncle Arthur - Arthur Fred Brown (1900 - 1984) gardener at Burley-on-the-Hill https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Brown-68855

Aunty Alice - Ethel Alice (Brown) Cooper (1903 - 1982) also in service before her marriage  https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Brown-68856

and their spouses and children.

Answer 19

I'd like to meet them all. Over the years they have felt much closer than they really are. But I am stuck between an 8th great grandfather and grandmother: Richard Singletary (Singletary-4) could finally put to rest all the differing stories about his birth and his first born son Jonathan; and  Rebecca Blessing Town Nurse who was hung as a witch July 19, 1692 as part of the Salem witch trials.   Both have so many stories written about them, I'd like to hear what they have to say.

Answer 20

I need a big table, too.

I would like to ask my father's father Robert Wesley Moffett (https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Moffett-342) who Tilla Brown was.  Tilla is named on my father's birth certificate as his mother.  Tilla was not Roberts wife at the time of father's birth.  No one has ever heard of Tilla.

I would like to get family history from Robert's parents, John Moffett and Sallie Chancellor Moffett (https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Moffett-343 and https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Chancellor-459).  Neither of them talked about their families.  And there was a burnt down courthouse in Fayette Count so records were lost.

I would like to ask William Archer Lipscomb (https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Lipscomb-493) who his parents, grandparents, and great great grand  parents were.  There is confusion in that line due to a burnt down courthouse.  About 60 years of records were lost so it's hard to make connections.

There are other brick walls such as John Burke (https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Burke-3578) and his wife Agnes (https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Unknown-295558).  On my compact tree only the Fitzberalds and Erwins point to many other generations of compact trees.

Can I invite cousins rather than ancestors, even if they are uncertain cousins?  Such as my uncertain 9^th cousin 6 times removed – President Thomas Jefferson.  And my 8th cousin once removed -- HM QE II.  Unfortunately I have no common ancestors in 30 generations with Richard Feynman.  But then my DNA report offered no Jewish connection at all.  Too bad, there would be lots of cousins to be proud of in that direction.