52 Ancestors Week 7: Love

Question

Ready for Week 7 of the 52 Ancestors challenge?

You're encouraged to share a profile of an ancestor or relative who matches the week's theme. This week's sharing prompt:

LOVE

From Amy Johnson Crow:

Valentine's Day is this week, but that doesn't mean you have to focus on romantic love. Besides the ancestral love stories, you could share an ancestor who you love to research. Are there any "love" names in the family tree, like Lovie or Valentine? (Come to think of it, "Amy" is based in Latin meaning "beloved"... ) 

Share below!

Participants who share every week can earn badges. Click here for more about the challenge and how to participate.

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Comments

My great uncle: Strickland, Lovie Noah https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/strickland-4897

Answer 1

My own name "Sheri" means "Darling, Beloved" - but I digress. My great-grandmother, Susan Lovda Deaton Owens was called "Lovie" and is enumerated at 8 years old as "Lovie Deaton" in 1880. She died at 37 of typhoid fever. 
 

Answer 2

Well you have to love the German name Valentin.  I have 2 ancestors with the middle name Valentin, which apparently is a reference to Saint Valentine:

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Fluegel-30

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Metzger-278

Comments

Valentine Fehr Maggie's 8th great-grandfather

Answer 3

The first name that I thought of was my father, my best friend forever, Howard. An English name which mean Strong Heart. He had a strong heart  in love for his wife and family, and in compassion for the weak and ill, those who suffered.

Answer 4

#52ancestors Week 7: Love

I love researching my Italian side. That shouldn't come to anyone's surprise. It's my last name. I grew up in an house which had my mother embrace a lot of my dad's Italian culture. She would make lasagna for Thanksgiving and all sorts of Italian goodies. The funny thing is that my grandma Ollie never taught her how to make things. Neither did my grandfather, Marco. She taught herself!

The reason why I love researching my Italian side is mainly because my mom's French Canadian and American roots are so established. It's great to find cousins on that side. Don't get me wrong. It's just that I managed to find all that information relatively easy. Mass records are crazy good. So are Quebec records.

I think what it is is that it's been researched extensively. Even part of my dad's side has been researched by my third cousin. She traced it back to the 1700s. Check out Gesualdogenie on Ancestry. She has so many banns and documents. It's awesome!

So here I am on my dad's paternal lines cracking brick walls and getting excited over new bits I find. Just in the last few months, I found:

1. A brother for my 2x great-grandfather.

2. Completed the family of Paolo Coppola and Rosa Suverato.

I'm hoping to find more because I love researching that side as there's a lot I still need to discover. I've compiled a list of questions that I'd like answered. There's just so much I want to learn! Plus researching it has introduced me to second cousins who live in Italy. Can't go wrong with that. What better way to get info on your family than with family?

And that's why I love researching my dad's paternal side. There's not a lot out there and I've been putting the pieces of a puzzle together one step at a time. The best part is that my dad and my great-aunt have been encouraging me. So has my mom. Can't beat that feeling. You really can't!

Answer 5

I would have to say my parents epitomize this week's theme of love. Skeeter and Bebe were sweethearts from the day they met (Mardi Gras, 1951) until the day she died in 1984. My daddy was so devoted to my mother, and that devotion was especially exemplified during the last year of her life while she fought pancreatic cancer. 

Comments

I saw the same thing in my father as he cared for my mother in the last six months of her life. It's left me with a lovely mind picture of my father.

Answer 6

Freelove Bennett  has a name that is an example of a word changing meaning over time.  I found this source that gives contemporary to her explanations.  There are no more Freelove's in the family as the later meaning of free love is quite different! 

Comments

I came upon a woman named Freelove, too, and wondered what her parents were thinking. It still sounds a bit wild to me, especially since her other given name was Starlight.

Answer 7

Growing up in a single parent home, I was always surprised when we visited my Uncle Scott and Aunt Marietta https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Parks-4252,  as they would sleep in the pullout bed in the living room to give my mother and grandmother their bed.  We kids would get up in the morning and see them all wrapped around each other. I still have never figured out how they could sleep that way. They were a true love story. He died 16 before she did, and my cousin and her son could walk by her bedroom and hear her crying herself to sleep every night for those 16 years. 

Answer 8

My 2nd Great Grandfather, John Wallace Campbell, was a beloved husband, father, and grandfather. He married his love "Clarie" while on furlough during the Civil War, on Christmas Eve, 1862, in Wapakoneta, Ohio. They had 13 children. Every summer, on or near John's birthday, August 1 (1842), the family gathered, for their annual "John Wallace "J.W." Campbell Family Reunion." The event was publicized in local newspapers.
These reunions CONTINUED long after my great-grandfather's death in 1911.  He was definitely loved. 

Answer 9

My Valentine's Day link is my great-great-grandfather, Linzy Valentine Hampton. He is one of my direct line brick walls and provides me with hours of wheel-spinning research. I guess you could say we have a love-hate relationship. <3 

Comments

Linzy Valentine Hampton married 4 times! His death certificate says he was the son of Jim Hampton and Mary Lloyd of Missouri.

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Despite him staying primarily in Cape Girardeau and surrounding areas, I sure do have a hard time of tracking his movements and who he married when.

I have not been able to find any information on his mother, can you provide information on the last name you mentioned? The death cert linked in his WikiTree profile (the Missouri PDF) only list 'Unknown' for his mother's last name. Thanks!

Answer 10

I am very grateful that my mother and father met at the University of Wisconsin, fell in love and were married for 63 years.  They were married for 63 years.

Answer 11

I really have to say that my husband is the epitome of love. He met me on July 5, 1976 in a twist of fate. I was out with my American Eskimo dog, Penny, sitting alone at the first little table next the wall, at the Dixie Chicken, in College Station, Texas. I had been widowed six months, was thinking over my life with two little kids, and had turned away a couple of guys. But then this tall, blonde man in blue jeans and a white V-neck tee-shirt says, "Are you alone or waiting for someone?" I looked up, and decided to say, I was alone.
He has been the love of my life - more importantly, he is the father to our children (we have three total) and grandfather to seven.  He is our family patriarch, loved by ALL my siblings, their children, and so many more.
He takes care of me 24/7 since I am paralyzed from a stroke, and have other health problems - EVEN THOUGH he has survived five heart attacks, stents and quintuple bypass, and has heart failure and COPD. He is my miracle man.
His mother died on Valentines Day, 1985. She was such a joy. Both of our mothers had the middle name "Jean."

Answer 12

I guess I don't have one specific ancestor, but using the premise "you could share an ancestor who you love to research", I'd have to say "all of them". 

I love the feeling of connection I get to my forebears every time I find out something I didn't know, or find a new "cousin" the family records either didn't mention at all or only mentioned as a kind of footnote attached to some other name.

I'm having a one-way love affair with those who came before.  Some of them were courageous, some of them don't appear to have been terribly  moral, some of them .. wow .. I can't imagine having that many children in so few years.  I find I grow attached (in a detached kind of way) to those who married IN to my family and I want to find out more about them as well.  (Which is how I ended up on the path to Arnæs, Hertugdømmet Slesvig these last several days.)

I love that I have found one cousin (second cousin twice removed) who lived to 105 years of age.

(This is week 7 and my 7th week of participating.)

Answer 13

Aside from my own name (haha) my great-great grandfather was named Lawrence Valentine Munro. Lawrence was definitely a very loving person...just, unfortunately, not to his wife. He married twice, and my great-grandmother Vera was born to his secretary (still unknown). He was apparently notorious for his loving tendencies.

Answer 14

I have a very loose connection here, but it's all I got, so here goes!   My 10th GGF is Edmund Freeman Jr.   Not feeling the love yet?    Okay, so his son John married Mercy Prence.  Mercy is the daughter of Thomas Prence and Patience Brewster.  Patience is the sister of Love Brewster, who also happens to be a Mayflower passenger!  So that makes Love the uncle of the wife of my 10th great uncle!   (hope the next one is easier!)

Comments

After all that trouble, I just found a simpler connection... my 7th GGM, Freelove Dickinson!

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Don't you just love Wikitree where you can find those connections instantaneously

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Yes!  Love the connection tools!

Answer 15

I take my parents. My mum came to Germany and lived the first 2 months at an elderly rich woman in Hamburg who knew Esperanto. My father knew that woman from his youth in Hesse, because she had lived there. He started to study in Hamburg and didn't know what to do so he called that woman. "Oh, come here, you can fix me something!" My mum had found a flat for her own, so it was her last evening with that woman. When she came home from work she saw a man on a ladder. They chatted that evening, and started dating and the next Christmas my father took her to his mother. On New Year's Eve my grandma gave them a ring measurer: "Here, test that out." At the beginning of next March they married.

Answer 16

When 3x Great-grandmother died, my 2x Great-grandfather was only a few months old.  He and his 5 siblings were without a mum.  Father remarried and from every family story I've heard, Margaret, the new step-mom, treated and loved each child as if they were her own.

Comments

Unconditional love knows no boundaries.  I had a very similar story with my great great grandparents Perry Showalter and Hattie Jenks his second wife.  She raised his children from his first marriage as her own.  They all loved her as Mom!

Answer 17

For this week's challenge, I chose Jean Valentine Ranc.  He has the "Valentine" name and he is my 8x great grandfather.  I met my first wikitree collaborator while working on this family, cousin SJ Baty.  We both contributed to dispelling the myths and fraudulent claims about our ancestors. I am really proud of the work that we did on the Ranck family.  I love it!

 

Comments

Ha!  I actually considered using Jean because of his middle name - glad to see my cousin was able to share our great ancestor!

Answer 18

My great gandfather Alfred Ernest Hercock married the lady he loved, my great grandmother Sarah Ann Stanley.

Because Sarah was a barmaid Alfred was disowned by most of his family for marrying somebody who they considered was below his status.

They had 12 children and had been married for 54 years when Sarah died in 1949.

Answer 19

I have loved researching my mother's family, particularly her father's lines--Jack Ledford. I always felt closest to them, and the more I learn about them, they come into clearer focus. My grandfather was of mythical stuff to me, and his family always had this magickial quality. Even the land where they lived (live) is special. I can't read about them enough, and unraveling how they got here is fascinating.

Answer 20

I have several Valentine's Day birthdays and anniversaries on my watchlist, including:

• Jeanne Jones (1950-2002), my sister-in-law, born 14 Feb 1950;
• Joseph Konicek (1853-1928), my great grand uncle, born 14 Feb 1853;
• Charles R. Hinds (1873-1951), another great grand uncle, born 14 Feb 1873;
• Cousin James Perkins (1746-1827) married Mary Hooper on 14 Feb 1771;
• Great grand aunt Eleanor Bennett (1689-1726) married Jonathan Fuller in 14 Feb 1712; and
• Great grand aunt Mariah Wetherbee married Joab Laycock on 14 Feb 1826.