My Umpty-Great Grandparents

Despite my exalted status as a genuine, card-carrying genealogist, there are still many issues I wrestle with that are probably old-hat to more experienced members of the profession. One of these issues is what to call my "umpty-great" grandparents.

This dilemma arose fairly early in my ancestral research. On both my parents' sides of the family, I already knew my ancestors back to my own great-grandparents, so I knew their names and what to call them. As I worked my way backward on the Pellman side, I could get no further than my great-great-grandfather, William Henry Pellman, so again no problem. Thanks to the excellent genealogical work of my late cousin, Al Hadad, I had also compiled the list of Schimmels, Meiers, and Trums back to my great-great-grandparents in each line. The issue arose when I started tracing the Jenner side of the family and got beyond Moses Johnson Jenner, my great-great-great-grandfather. Saying or typing three "greats" wasn't all that problematic, but when trying to describe my Revolutionary War patriot ancestor, Stephen Jenner, I started getting tongue-tied. Stephen was my great-great-great-great-great-grandfather -- that's five "greats" -- and I tended to lose track of where I was, both typing and saying it.

When my daughter and I were preparing for our visit to his burial site, I remember how silly I felt saying, "We're going to try to find the grave of my great-great-great-great-great-grandfather who fought in the American Revolution," as I counted on my fingers. And it got downright ridiculous when I said we were also going to Woodbury "to find the grave of my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, Samuel Jenner I." Typing it just now I accidentally put in one too many "greats" and had to go back and delete it! First I tried abbreviating it to "gr-gr-gr-gr-gr-gr-great-grandfather," but that just sounded even siller -- as if I'd suddenly developed a severe stammer. Then I tried "my seven-times-great grandfather," but someone actually asked me, "What makes him seven times as great as your other grandfather?" So, I finally settled on "umpty-great" because more people seemed to understand what I meant, and I don't think they really cared whether he had five, six, or seven "greats" in front of "grandfather". They really only needed to understand it was a direct ancestor several generations before me.

Things reached a surreal level of ridiculousness when I learned that I was descended from Charlemagne and tried to figure out a meaningful way to explain that there should be 38 "greats" in front of grandfather! A single exclamation point seems inadequate to describe how ludicrous that seemed to me, so I actually considered following my previous sentence with 38 exclamation points for appropriate emaphasis. One thing I knew for certain: I wasn't about to say or write "great" 38 times in front of grandfather. No way!

The Internet hasn't been a great deal of help in resolving this problem so far. On various genealogy websites -- and I have visited hundreds of them -- I have encountered numerous forms of short-hand notation for umpty-great grandparents, including (for Charlemagne):

• "38-times-great-grandfather"


• "38x-great-grandfather"


• "38-great-grandfather"


• "38-g grandfather"


• "38th generation great-grandfather"


• "38th great-grandfather"


• and the extremely succinct "38ggf"

None of these seems entirely satisfactory. Each has pros and cons. 38ggf, for example, is compact and suitable for a short-hand notation while doing research, but seems a disrespectfully brief description to give a man of Charlemagne's importance. 38th great-grandfather is okay, but seems grammatically confusing, as if Charlemagne #38 out of what should be no more than four great-grandfathers. 38th generation great-grandfather is probably the most descriptive of the alternatives, but again seems technically incorrect, since Charlemagne is actually in the 39th generation prior to me. 38-g grandfather only saves four letters, so I would prefer to just type 38-great-grandfather and leave no doubt what that g stands for (I wouldn't want anyone thinking he only weighed 38 grams!). 38x-great-grandfather sounds vaguely like poor Charlemagne might be my ex-38th-great-grandfather -- as if I would kick him out of the family! And, while 38-times-great-grandfather seems to me the most technically correct shorthand, it still leaves the possibility that some of my non-genealogy-buff friends and family would get the impression that Charlemagne had been my great-grandfather 38 times. Would they wonder if he was ever going to try for 39?

So I'm hoping that some sagacious member of the genealogical community can give me some suggestions on satisfactorily resolving this nomenclature issue. If you have any suggestions, please leave them as comments to this blog posting.

The Fountain of Youth

[Vivian Grace (Jenner) Pellman (1887-1973)]

Every so often my genealogical research makes me stop and think. As my family tree began to sprout more branches, I noticed a pattern emerging that gave me one such pause: a lot of my ancestors lived much longer than I would have expected. With all the recent debate and uproar over health care and health care reform, it has made me re-examine not just my thinking, but my lifestyle.

To fully understand how significant this was to me, you have to know that about six years ago I was diagnosed as a Type 2 diabetic. My doctor also informed me that I had numerous risk factors for coronary artery disease and pretty much led me to believe that I might keel over at any moment from a heart attack or stroke -- especially if I didn't choke down about a dozen pills a day and dramatically alter my eating and exercise habits. It was after I had been on this regimen about three years -- off and on, at least -- that I began to notice the longevity of my ancestors.

As I traced the various branches of my family and dutifully recorded their birth and death dates, I saw that my father, John A. Pellman (1920-2001) had lived over 81 years, my grandfather, John Guss Pellman (1891-1970) had lived 79 years, George Frederick Pellman (1868-1943) 75 years, William Henry Pellman (1827-1901) 73 years. And these weren't people who had lived lives of luxury and pampering. My father suffered from tuberculosis as a child, and endured the Great Depression and the Second World War. My grandfather had grown up in a frontier town, served in World War I, and suffered through the Great Depression. His father had been the son of a sharecropper and a frontier lawman. And his father was a tenant farmer who had fought three years of civil warfare in Prussia, another three years in the Civil War (see The Ravages of War), and entered the Oklahoma Land Rush at the age of 68.

At first I was tempted to conclude that the Pellmans were simply hardy stock ... until I noticed that the same was true of the Jenner side of my family. My grandmother, Vivian Grace Jenner (1887-1973), who is pictured above, had lived 86 years. Her father, Almond Lewis Jenner (1863-1946) 83 years. His father, Moses German Jenner (1833-1907) 74 years. And so on, back to Samuel Jenner I (c. 1650-1738) who lived at least 85 years during colonial times!

This just didn't make sense. I had always been told that average life expectancy prior to the 20th century was about 40 years, yet most of my ancestors had lived nearly double that. And the same was true of every other branch of my family. With rare exception, the men were living 75 or more years -- even in the 16th century and earlier. But, I soon noticed the same was not true of the women in my family. True, many lived well into their 70s and 80s, like Hannah Hinman (1666-1743), Hannah Parmelee (1706-1780), and Mercy Lewis (1679-1761). But many others died quite young, like Gabriella Phelps (1870-1927), Elizabeth Wallis (1652-1689), Louisa Wise (1834-1864), and Diantha Cady (1810-1837).

Gradually, the pattern began to reveal itself. The women who survived past the age of 40 tended to live well into their 70s or beyond. There were only a handful who died in their 50s or 60s. It was either young or old, and very little in between.

As I related in Tears in the Graveyard, we have discovered that about one-third of the children born to our pre-20th century ancestors did not survive to reach adulthood. Many died within days of their birth, many others from typhoid or influenza, and a few from drowning or fatal injuries. The males who reached adulthood either lived long, full lives or they were killed in battle or by other injuries. Very few of the men succumbed to disease as adults. The women were less fortunate. Quite a few died of complications from childbirth before the age of 40. Another signifcant cause of death was disease -- expecially typhoid and influenza. But those who reached 40 usually lived at least another 30 years.

So, yes, the average lifespan was indeed about 40 years. But, like so many statistics, the average doesn't reveal the truth. The truth is that the people who survived the dangers of childhood and the women who survived the rigors of childbirth and child-rearing lived just as long -- if not longer -- than people live today. And they did it without regular health care, annual check-ups, health insurance, HMOs, PPOs, and MediCare!

What was their secret? What was their "fountain of youth"? Simple: constant activity and good food.

Instead of sitting behind a desk for eight hours, then spending a half-hour in the gym, they worked steadily all day long. Sure, they did hard work, too. But they didn't spend the entire day felling timber and digging up stumps. Most of their work was planting, tilling, weeding, grinding -- moderate work that kept them active the entire day.

And they didn't eat low-fat yogurt, Omega-3 fatty acids, and endive salads with basalmic vinegar dressing. They ate meat, potatoes, bread, and fruits or vegetables when they were in season. Meat could be salted, smoked, or cured; potatoes, turnips, and carrots would keep in the root cellar; and grains could be stored in bins and cannisters, so they could be eaten year-round. But fruits and vegetables were mostly seasonal additions to their diets. They did not follow the "food pyramid". They didn't have vitamins and supplements. And they cooked with plenty of butter, salt, and lard! They broke almost every dietary rule we are told will keep us healthy today. But what they also didn't have were steroids, colorings, flavorings, and chemical additives in their food. It was natural, whole food -- nothing more. Salt, brine, and wood smoke were their primary preservatives; not chemicals.

All of the wonders of science and medicine have not added one day to our lifespan! People are not living longer than they did 200 years ago; just more of them are living as long. That's an important distinction to understand as we look at the issues of health care and retirement in the 21st century world. And the enormous costs of medical care we are burdened with are chiefly the result of excessive leisure in our lives. Our grandparents were right when they told us, "A little hard work never hurt anyone."

As we examine the issues surrounding health care, instead of asking how we can reduce the cost of the healthcare our unhealthy lives require, we should be asking ourselves how much we are willing to pay in added health care costs for our unhealthy lifestyles. That's the message my ancestors sent me this week.

A True Heroine

July 30th was my Mom’s 90th birthday. You may be surprised to learn that she is part of my family tree, too. She had a lot to do with my interest in genealogy – just not so much with my early research. Until I started researching my family history I thought I knew a lot about her side of the family. While I was growing up, she regaled me with stories of her English and Scottish forebears. We had photos and other memorabilia throughout the house of her parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles, as well as many of the places they had lived and traveled. She took me to the British Isles twice during my childhood to make sure I had met my English and Scottish relatives and visited the homelands of my British ancestors. I still have many of the souvenirs I collected on those journeys: Kerr tartan ties, a Scottish tam, English coins, and vibrant memories.

She was born Violet Joyce Willis in Chepstow, Monmouthshire. Monmouthshire is a sort of no man’s land. Sometimes it’s listed as a county in Wales; other times as a county in England. From what I can gather of its history, it has gone back and forth between England and Wales several times over the centuries, as various medieval kingdoms expanded and contracted by conquest. She was the first of two children of Leonard John Willis, my namesake, and Winnifred Violet Kerr, so culturally she is half English, half Scottish, and a naturalized American.

Her earliest memories are not of Chepstow, but of the six-acre farm the family purchased in Laindon, Essex, when she was still quite young. She grew up with few of the amenities we now take for granted. No running water, electricity, or indoor plumbing. Even as a child of 7 or 8, her mornings began shortly after sunrise with chores: feeding chickens, collecting eggs, pumping a bucket of water, and the like. Of course ,there was school and plenty of fun, but she grew up understanding the value and necessity of hard work and priorities. But the farm failed, so the family moved to Sydenham in the late 1920s.

As Britain entered the Great Depression, work was hard to come by, but eventually her father found employment with the Craven A Tobacco Company as a groundskeeper at its employee recreation facilities in Edgware, Middlesex. There, Mum made several lifelong friends and life was happy and stable for awhile … until Hitler began his conquest of Europe in the late 1930s. Once again, her father lost his job, and they moved back to Sydenham. Mum, in her late teens, went to work as a secretary for the London, Midland, and Scottish Railway, then Britain’s largest railway company, commuting daily from Sydenham to the company’s headquarters in Euston.
When the Second World War broke out in late 1939, Mum went to work for the United Glass Bottle Company in London, making “Molotov cocktails” for the war effort. The family could not afford a bomb shelter, so her brother, Ray, dug a 6-by-6-by-6 foot pit in their backyard and covered it with corrugated tin roofing and about two feet of dirt. The family all survived the London Blitz of 1940-41, in which more than 45,000 London civilians were killed and over a million homes destroyed, but a house whose rear garden bordered theirs was demolished by a direct hit from a bomb that killed the entire family. Mum realized that dropped from about 10,000 feet, a mere gust of wind had meant the difference between that bomb striking her neighbors’ house or her own!

Her father died of prostate cancer in July, 1942, which made her eligible for conscription – the British term for being drafted. So, on advice of her employers Mum applied for a secretarial position at the American Embassy. She was hired, but assigned to the Ordnance Division, Transportation Corps of the U.S. Army. Initially, she was assigned to Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, where she met my father. Shortly after D-Day, however, she was read the Articles of War, put in uniform, and shipped off to France to coordinate the movement of ammunition into the European Theatre of Operations (ETO). When she arrived in Paris, German snipers were still active, so the windows were all blacked out in the building in which she worked. She had been working in Paris for several days before the city was officially “liberated” by the triumphant arrival of Generals Montgomery and Patton – and she still has the photographs to prove she was there first.

Of her contribution to the war effort, she has this to say: “Patton ran out of gasoline, but he never ran out of bullets, because that was my job!”

After the German surrender, her offices were relocated to Frankfurt, Germany. Dad returned to the United States and, after a period of pining for her, wrote her a letter proposing marriage. She accepted, and left for America with only £100 and what she could carry in a suitcase. She arrived in New York, cleared Customs and Immigration just in time to catch the last train out of Grand Central Station before the railroads went on strike. When she reached Chicago, she was put off the train by the strike. Traveler’s Aid eventually helped her reach Ogden, Utah, and from there she found her own way to Los Angeles, where she was met by her future husband.

After serving in uniform in a combat zone for nearly two years and making her own way across the North American continent, in a classic example of British understatement she describes herself as “a bit more adventuresome than my mother.” Really?

She was married to my father for 55 years, from 1946 until his passing in 2001. She worked as a secretary for the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company for many years, then helped my father and his business partner run the Miles Motel in La Mesa, California until they sold it in 1957. After that, she was the classic stay-at-home mom of the 1950s and early 1960s, and life really was like Leave It to Beaver and Father Knows Best for us. She was active in Sigma Alpha, a career-women’s sorority that supports disabled children, serving in a variety of local, regional, and national offices for decades. She was also an avid bridge player and golfer all the while she was raising me and serving as den mother to my Scout troop, Little League mom, PTA member, church board member, and all the rest.

She made sure I met people who were different from me, like the kids at the Cerebral Palsy Association, where she frequently volunteered. When I started making friends from different cultural and ethnic groups, she did everything she could to encourage me to experience life from their perspectives and not just my own. As a mother I can’t think of anything she could have done to make my childhood more enjoyable, enriching, or rewarding.

After I went out on my own, she remained active in her sorority and church, playing golf and bridge, and supporting my Dad. My father suffered a debilitating stroke in 1983, and for the next 18 years she served as his care-giver without let-up or complaint. She was once asked why she didn’t institutionalize him so she could get on with her own life, and her reply was direct and a perfect reflection of her character: “When I stood at the altar and said, ‘For better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part,’ I meant it.”

She’s still active and alert. Although she’s had a few of the health issues that come naturally at her age, she hasn’t let them stop her. She has a computer and stays in touch by email – although she can still use a real typewriter; not just a keyboard. She remains to this day one of the most remarkable people I’ve ever met.

We threw her a surprise party today at her favorite restaurant, the Olive Garden, where she is a regular and an obvious favorite with the staff. About 40 of her closest friends and family came to remind her how much she is loved and appreciated by everyone who knows her. She was showered with affection, cards, and gifts, but the highlight for me was a letter sent from Buckingham Palace by one of Queen Elizabeth’s ladies-in-waiting, which read in part:

“The Queen was, however, most interested to hear of your mother’s service during the Second World War, and of the way in which her family has served the United Kingdom for generations. Her Majesty was … [also] pleased to hear about her special birthday. The Queen hopes that Mrs. Pellman will have a very happy day on 30th July.”

So let me add, Happy Birthday, Mom!

Granddad and Moonwalking

JOHN GUSS PELLMAN

(15 August 1891 - 30 November 1970)

Apollo 11 Lunar Landing

(20 July 1969)

Today marks the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, and the media are inundating us with images, reflections, and analysis of the historic event. Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldren, Michael Collins, Walter Cronkite, and John F. Kennedy are being celebrated for their roles in this world-changing event -- as they should be. But my most vivid recollections of the Apollo landing will always be of my grandfather, John Guss Pellman.

My parents traveled a lot when I was young, so I spent a lot of time at my grandparents' house at 4204 Ingalls Street in the Mission Hills district of San Diego. If I remember correctly, the house was actually ordered from the Sears & Roebuck catalog and built in 1924. It's been almost 40 years since I was last in that house, but I can vividly recall every detail of it, down to the pictures on the walls, the curtains, the nick-nacks, and even the smells. That's where I was on July 20, 1969 when Apollo 11 touched down -- sitting on my grandparents' brown hide-a-bed sofa watching it all unfold on TV with Walter Cronkite providing the commentary.

It was probably soon after Neil Armstrong uttered his immortal statement, "That's one small step for a man; one giant leap for mankind," that I turned away from the TV and exclaimed, "Isn't that cool, Granddad?"

To this day, I remember the sensation I felt. It was like a mild electric shock that ran down both of my arms. There were tears in my grandfather's eyes. It was the first and only time I had ever seen him cry! And I couldn't understand why he would be crying when the whole world around him was rejoicing.

"What's wrong, Granddad?" I asked.

"Now I've seen it all," he said softly, gazing in awe at the TV. I must have looked puzzled by his remark, because he explained it something like this: "When your Grandma and I were married, most people were still using horse-and-buggies. There was no radio or TV, and airplanes were still experimental. Not many people had telephones, so we heard about most things from newspapers, letters, or over the neighbor's fence. And now -- in my lifetime -- they've sent a man to the moon with a TV camera so I can actually watch it happen. I've seen everything!"

I didn't truly understand the import of his remarks then. It was only after I began studying technology and social change during my PhD program that I began to sense the enormity of the change he had experienced and why it had affected him so deeply that day.

Granddad was born on August 15, 1891 in Farley, Missouri. Farley was nicknamed "Schimmel Town" because the Schimmels were such a large proportion of the town's population, which is still only about 250 people. His parents were George Frederick Pellman and Mary Victoria Schimmel. His childhood home had no running water or indoor plumbing, no electricity or gas, no furnace or air conditioning, no refrigerator -- not even a fan! Other than the house being a little more weather-tight and having a cast-iron stove for cooking, and buggies and wagons having improved seats and suspensions, most technologies used in his everyday life were not that much different that those of the Middle Ages! The major technological advances at the time of his birth -- railroads, steamships, mechanized harvesting equipment, and the telegraph -- were not a part of his daily life.

After spending his first ten years in Farley, the family moved to Kaw City, Oklahoma Territory, where his grandfather had settled after trying to stake a claim during the Cherokee Strip Land Run of 1893. While his father was sheriff of Kay County, young John and his brothers spent much of their time on the Kaw Reservation, playing with the children of the Kansa tribe. He once remarked, "When we played cowboys and Injuns, we had real Injuns. The only problem was the Injuns always won!" Washungah, the last chief of the Kansa Nation, appears to have been like an uncle to Granddad and he always spoke of him with great respect and affection.

When Oklahoma achieved statehood in 1907, the family moved to Leavenworth, Kansas, where Granddad remained until the outbreak of World War I. He spent those years working a variety of trades including barber and blacksmith. As automobiles grew in popularity, Granddad made the transition from blacksmith to automotive mechanic. He returned from serving in the War, married Vivian Grace Jenner in 1919 and moved to San Diego, California shortly after the birth of my father, John A. Pellman, to take a job as service manager for the Paige (a brand that later became part of General Motors) Agency in San Diego. He showed up for work with just a screwdriver and pliers in his hip pocket. "If you can repair cars with just a screwdriver and pair of pliers," the owner remarked, "You must be one heck of a mechanic!"

Paige was acquired by the Graham brothers in 1927, but the company did not survive the Great Depression and Granddad found himself unemployed in the early 1930s. Nevertheless, he continued to hone his skills as a mechanic and adapt to new technologies. When the government began rationing gasoline during the Second World War, his son Robert C. Pellman converted the family car to run on butane, so they could trade their rationing coupons for other essentials. Granddad continued to do the majority of his own mechanical work on increasingly complex automobiles until quite late in his life.

So, he was no stranger to technological change, nor was it something that intimidated him, as we sat there together watching the moon landing 40 years ago. His tears were simply tears of awe, as he reflected upon all that he had witnessed during his life.

I will see nothing of that magnitude in my lifetime unless we invent teleportation, fully functioning androids, or break the light-speed barrier in the next 20 years or so. I've seen computers become smaller and more powerful, airplanes become faster, appliances become more energy-efficient, phones become smaller and portable, and dozens of other adaptations and improvements of technologies that existed when I was born. But there have not been, and probably will not be, the revolutionary and life-altering technological advances that occurred during Granddad's life, which literally spanned the Horse-and-Buggy Era to the Space Age!

What'chu Talkin' 'Bout, Willis?

My mother was born Violet Joyce Willis in Chepstow, Monmouthshire. There is a long-standing controversy over whether Monmouthshire is truly part of England or Wales -- the joke being that the Welsh claim it is English and the English claim it is Welsh! She was conscripted (what Americans call "drafted") into the British Army shortly after the outbreak of the Second World War and assigned to duty with the American Army, Ordnance Division, in Ammunition Supply. That is where she met my father. Following the War she immigrated to the United States in 1946 and married my father, making her my immigrant ancestor on my maternal side.

For purposes of Michaela's school project on immigrant ancestors, that was the end of our research on the Willis side of the family. Of course, growing up I had heard stories about my English and Scottish ancestors, so I knew that her father was my namesake, Leonard John Willis, and her mother was Winnifred Violet Kerr of Clan Kerr in Midlothian, Scotland. I had also been told that my great-grandfather, William Willis, had been a barrister (we call them lawyers in the U.S.) and that William's father had been a Queens Counsel judge. On two trips to England, I had met quite a few of my Willis and Kerr aunts and uncles, as well, but for the first 57 years of my life that was all I knew of my Willis ancestry. But once aroused, my curiosity was no longer satisfied with that mere smattering of information.

When my daughter and I started our ancestral research, I was certain that tracing our British ancestry would be easy. After all, the British had been keeping meticulous records since the Norman Conquest of 1066 and the Domesday Book. And to govern an empire that had spanned the entire globe since the 16th century, surely the British maintained birth, marriage, property, and death records second to none. Well, once I turned my attention to my mother's side of the family I was again reminded of what happens when you assume ...

As it turns out, the British do have meticulous records of births, marriages, property transactions, and deaths. Unfortunately, they have no workable system for searching and locating those records! None of those functions were centralized until the 20th century. So, if you want to locate the birth record of someone born before 1900, you must not only know what county and city or town they were born in, you must also know which parish it was. That's roughly equivalent to knowing the Zip Code of someone's birthplace!

When you've waited until everyone who might have remembered what parish your great-great-grandfather was born in has died, the task takes an ugly twist! If I had had the sense to ask these questions while my grandparents and great-aunts and uncles were still alive my research might have been made vastly easier. Let that be a lesson to you younger readers!

Once again, I was spending two or three hours a night a couple of nights a week, and months went by without a breakthrough in researching my Willis ancestors. It was then that my mother came to the rescue! Knowing of the new found interest my daughter and I had developed in genealogy, my mother decided that one of the best gifts she could give her son and grandchildren was her memoirs. So, she prepared a book for each of us containing the story of her life and all that she could recall of her family. And in those memoirs I found a vital clue.

As had been the case with the Jenner side of my family (see "A Tale of Two Samuels"), one of the keys to unraveling the Willis line was realizing that there had been two William Willises: William Willis the barrister, and Judge William Willis, QC. In all the years my mother had talked about her grandfather and great-grandfather I had never realized they were both William Willis. It wasn't until I saw the information written down in her memoirs that I understood this. Still, I had googled "William Willis" and "William Willis QC" countless times and never found anything helpful. But, as I read Mum's spare recollections of the two men's lives a thought occurred to me: there might be an obituary on a Queen's Counsel judge, since he would have been a man of considerable prominence. And I was right! But it was not to be found in the London Times archives or somewhere you would ordinarily expect.

When I googled "William Willis obituary" in April 2009 the first UK result that Google returned was a PDF document posted on the website of Toddington Baptist Church. I clicked it and there it was: my great-great-grandfather's obituary! Of course, I wasn't certain of it at first, but once I read the entire article and compared it to Mum's memoirs there was no doubt. The funeral notice mentioned F. H. Willis ("Uncle Frank" in Mum's memoirs) and a son-in-law named H. S. Saunders, who had married my mother's "Aunt Trissie." All of the pieces fit the puzzle perfectly! And by visiting other pages on the Toddington Baptist site I was able to trace back three more generations! A page entitled "Roots" listed Judge William's father and grandfather: another William Willis and Thomas Willis. The obituary and funeral notice also provided several other bits of information we had not previously known, including the maiden names of both Judge William's and Barrister William's wives and the fact that Judge Willis was elected to Parliament in 1880 representing Colchester.

Every bit of additional information -- dates and places of birth, names of spouses and children, vocations, titles, achievements, etc. -- allows a researcher to refine searches in the various online databases. Names like William Willis are commonplace, but there are far fewer Judge William Willises who were born in Toddington, Bedfordshire, the son of a strawhat maker named William, and married first to Annie Outhwaite, then subsequently to Marie Elizabeth Moody, served as a Queens Counsel judge under Queen Victoria and a King's Counsel judge under Edward VII, and even served as a Member of Parliament. In fact, only one that I've found so far!

"Hey Dad!"

A Tribute to Alexander S. Hadad
1922 - 2008
. . . _ . _

This wasn't the entry I had originally intended to upload today. But, as I was reviewing my previous postings I was struck by how much all of them owed to my cousin, Al Hadad. So, forgive me for altering my plans a bit and allow me to pay a long-overdue tribute to a man who had been inspiring my genealogical research even before I began it.

Alexander S. Hadad was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada in 1922. His father, Lewis Raymond (Ramon) Hadad had been born in 1889 in Petah Tikva, Ottoman Palestine. I don't know the whole story yet, but I'm guessing that Ramon Hadad left Palestine in the aftermath of World War I and the end of Ottoman rule over Palestine. With Palestine in British hands, it probably made immigration to Canada both feasible and desireable. Shortly thereafter, he met and married Mollie Trackman, who had recently immigrated from Zhitomir, Russia. In 1922 they had a son and named him Alexander Sanders Hadad.

I don't know much about Al's early life. What I know of him -- what he talked about most when I was around -- were the events following the bombing of Pearl Harbor. No sooner had the U.S. been dragged into the Second World War then Al joined the Merchant Marine as a radio operator. Now, "Merchant Marine" isn't technically supposed to be capitalized. But, once I came to know the heroic deeds of the Merchant Marine I began capitalizing it out of respect for all those who have served in it. You see, merchant mariners are not considered "veterans" of the wars in which they served, because they were not actually members of the armed forces. But, they took the same risks as any other mariner. Almost one out of every 25 Merchant Marine vessels was sunk by enemy fire during World War II, but the brave mariners who served in that armada are not "veterans" of the war.

After serving four years, Al returned stateside. In 1946, he married Marian Adele Jewett. Marian is the daughter of Ralph Jewett and Margaret Pellman -- so that's when Al became a member of my family. He was again serving in the Merchant Marine in the Korean War when I was born, so I have known him all my life.

After the Korean War, Al went to work for Trans-World Airways (TWA) as a flight radio officer. After a few years in the cockpit, he joined Philco-Ford Aerospace, working in its military space division until he retired in 1985. I don't know what his academic background was, but I do know that he was a brilliant mind, fascinated by the world around him and enjoying every moment he spent in it. He brightened any room he entered with his presence. Like Wil Rogers, he never seemed to meet anyone he didn't like and I can't imagine that anyone didn't like him in return. He was fun to be around, could carry a conversation on practically any topic without dominating it, and always saw the bright and hopeful side of things.

He would often announce his arrival with a shout of "Hey, Dad! The Hadad's are here!" pronouncing Hadad as "HAY-dad" rather than the Middle Eastern "haw-DAWD." From then until the moment he left, life was a party. And all the while you were in his presence you were engaged in a sparkling give-and-take conversation in which he would regale you with tales of his latest exploits and those of his children and elicit from you your most recent adventures. The whole time, his beaming, toothy smile and bright eyes never left you for a second, and you knew you were talking to a man who genuinely cared about you and every detail of your life. Simply put, he made you feel important.

For all the years I knew him, Al had a fascination with genealogy. During those years, he compiled a vast amount of information on the Pellman family and all the families connected to it. In the first six months of my research, 90 percent of my information came from the vast storehouse Al had passed on to me long before I showed the slightest interest in it. But, Al was far more than merely a repository of names, dates, and places. He was fascinated by -- and a master of telling -- the stories of people's lives. He understood, long before the same realization came to me, that genealogy is not simply a collection of facts about ancestors. It is the story of how we came to be the people we are -- the personalities, ideals, and events that have shaped us.

Sadly, I believe Al went to his grave never realizing how profoundly he had influenced my eventual interest and research. It was less than a year before his passing that my interest in genealogy truly blossomed, and by the time I had learned much beyond what he had provided me, he had grown ill and was no longer able to check his email, so I was never able to share it with him.

I launched this blog as a tribute to my ancestors and a way of expressing my appreciation for how they paved the way for my life decades, even centuries, before I was born. So it seems entirely fitting that one of my earliest postings should be a tribute to the man who, more than any other, inspired me to learn about my family and its multi-layered, multifaceted story. My closing tribute to him is inspired by his other lifelong hobby: ham radio. The caption beneath his photo includes a line of dots and dashes which are a play on words that ham radio operators and Morse code users will clearly understand. I'll end this message with the translation. If you don't know Morse prosigns it won't mean anything to you, but I know Al will understand, and that's who I'm writing it for.

30 (SK)

The Ravages of War

For months, the name William Henry Pellman seemed like little more than a genealogical dead-end. Family records indicated that he had been born in 1827, but not where he had been born. There were records on Ancestry.com of at least a dozen Pellmans born around 1800, any one of whom might have been William Henry’s father, but no documents linking him to any of them. There were also hints that he might have been a descendent of some of the Pennsylvania “Dutch” Pellmans or Amish Pellmans, but again no documentation. We even found some speculation that his parents – or at least his father – had been one of thousands of Hessians who had fought on the side of England during the American Revolution.

After countless hours chasing unproductive leads, I finally gave up on finding the parents of William Henry Pellman and moved on to easier lines of research. As if to mock me for my impatience, two significant documents came into my possession within a couple of weeks of my giving up on William Henry Pellman. One was a copy of the book, Four Trails to Texas by Walter L. Robertson, the other was a copy of some research done by other descendents of William Henry. Together, the two documents creating a moving portrait of a pioneering ancestor.

William Henry Pellman had been born Wilhelm Heinrich Pöhlman in Lűtesburg, Preussen (Prussia) on September 29, 1827. His early life was that of a lowly tenant farmer in the Prussian feudal system. He was not yet 21 when he joined in the March Revolution of 1848 and fought for a parliamentary form of government in the German Confederation. For the next three years he fought in the First War of Schlesswig. His earnings as a soldier and a brief lull in the hostilities gave him a chance to board the ship Harvest in late 1852 bound for the U.S.

When he arrived in Baltimore Harbor on December 14, 1852, William Henry was young and strong, and had just arrived in the Land of Opportunity. He must surely have believed that his days of warfare and tenant farming were behind him. Sadly, this was not to be the case.

Overnight, Wilhelm Heinrich Pöhlman, Prussian tenant farmer and soldier became William Henry Pellman, American pioneer. We don’t know what course his life took during the next five years that led him down the Ohio River to finally settle in Aurora, Indiana. But during this time, he met and married his wife, Elise Meier, and they had their first child. They next appear on the 1860 federal census as a tenant farmer on the property of James and Adda Gould in Aurora. And just a year later, he would be embroiled in another civil war.

Shortly after the outbreak of hostilities in April, 1861, William Henry Pellman joined the 45th Indiana Volunteers, a unit that was later reorganized as the 3rd Indiana Regiment, where he served for the next two years in the U.S. Civil War. Nine months after his return from the war, his daughter, Maria Louisa (“Louise”) was born. The Pellmans remained as share-croppers in Indiana until mid-1868, when they moved to Farley, Missouri, where the majority of Elise’s family had settled. Surely, their move was motivated in part by the hope of achieving more than just being tenant farmers. His children recalled that he had often stated that his dream was to “someday own a place of my own.”

Missouri proved to be a land of both joy and heartbreak for William and Elise. William was one of 13 men who founded the Lutheran Church in Farley, and it is said that he loved that church. He and Elise had four more children in Farley between 1868 and 1875. But William remained a share-cropper during his entire stay in Missouri. The winters of 1888 and 1889 were particularly cold and bitter, and took a terrible toll on the Pellman family. Louise died of pneumonia in February, 1888. In 1889, both Elise and their daughter Lizzie also succumbed to pneumonia.

In the aftermath of these tragic losses, the first Oklahoma Land Run of 1889 must have sparked William’s imagination with the possibility of finally owning land of his own. As additional land runs were announced in subsequent years, the allure must have steadily grown stronger. In late 1892, William – now 65 years old – set off for Oklahoma with his youngest sons, John and Guss. At high noon on April 16, 1893, William Henry, John, and Guss Pellman were lined up with an estimated 100,000 other dream-filled or desperate contenders for the 40,000 available tracts of Oklahoma land being offered in the Cherokee Strip Land Run -- the most dramatic pursuit of land in American history!

The exact details have long been forgotten, but it is likely that the Pellmans were ill prepared for this adventure. The going price for land was only about $10 per acre, so the fact that William Henry was racing for land instead of buying it suggests that he could not scrape together the price of a fast horse -- and certainly not the price of a team of fast horses to pull the family wagon. They found themselves pitted against men who had invested everything they had in sturdy wagons and fast horses for the race, as well as rifles to defend the land they claimed -- or in some cases to drive others off their rightful claims. And they probably weren't prepared to deal with men who were willing to cheat or kill for a scrap of land, like the "Sooners" who hid out in the prairie and stole the claims of many honest contenders. We will never know whether the Pellmans fell victim to Sooners, a broken wheel, if their wagon was just too slow, or if -- at age 66 -- William Henry was just too old for the rigors of the race. We know only that the Pellmans were not successful in staking a claim in the great Cherokee Strip Land Run.

William Henry Pellman, a man who had lived through five years of fighting in two civil wars and endured the hardships of tenant farming for over 50 years, would never fulfill his long-held dream of owning a piece of the Land of Opportunity. Nevertheless, he lived a life that exemplified faith, courage, perseverence, and fortitude in the face of daunting hardship -- a legacy I would be proud to live up to!

Despite his failure to obtain a homestead, William Henry lived out the rest of his days in the Oklahoma Territory. Following the Cherokee Strip Land Run, he and his sons, John and Guss settled in Kay County, Oklahoma. William Henry died in 1901 and is buried in the Oak Grove Cemetery in Ponca City.

The Major Branches

The first step in our ancestral quest was to identify the major branches of our family tree. While we were waiting for my ex-wife to provide a list of her known ancestors, my daughter and I went to work on the Pellman side of the family. This started off easily enough. My father was John A. Pellman and my mother's maiden name was Violet Joyce Willis. For my daughter's school assignment, we didn't need to research my mother's ancestors, since she was the immigrant ancestor on that side of the family. So we set the Willis side of the family aside for the moment and concentrated our efforts on the Pellmans.

My paternal grandfather was John Guss Pellman and my paternal grandmother was Vivian Grace Jenner. I remembered that my grandmother had believed that she was either descended from Dr. Edward Jenner, the discoverer of smallpox vaccine, or one of his brothers, and I had shared this information during show-and-tell at school many times during my childhood. So we were excited about exploring the Jenner line of our ancestry and documenting this descendancy. My Uncle Bob, who has the memory of an elephant, provided the names of my grandfather's parents, George Frederick Pellman and Mary Victoria Schimmel, and my grandmother's parents, Almond Lewis Jenner and Gabriella Belle Phelps. So, within the first few hours of our quest, we had already identified my daughter's Pellman-side ancestors back to her great-great-grandparents! We now had the surnames of Pellman, Jenner, Phelps, and Schimmel for the major branches of our family tree. And the assignment was going to be a snap! Or so we thought ...

Unfortunately, neither the records nor the memories on my ex-wife's side of the family were as complete as my Uncle's, so we weren't as fortunate with the other half of my daughter's ancestors. We spent a couple of hours a day for several weeks tracking down bogus leads on the Internet, but were never able to trace the other side of the family beyond my daughter's great-grandparents. Two years later, we are only just piecing together some of that information.

So, as far as the assignment went, we were done. We were able to determine from letters and other accounts that the Pellmans, Jenners, Phelpses, and Schimmels had all come to America earlier than my daughter's great-great-grandparents. Since my mother was the only immigrant among the known ancestors, she became the focus of my daughter's written report and oral presentation. And the case could have been closed, had our curiosity not been piqued by what we had learned in the process. Even though the assignment was complete, both my daughter and I still wanted to know who our immigrant ancestors were and when they did come to the U.S.

Many years earlier my cousin, Al Hadad, had done a considerable amount of research into the Pellman and Schimmel families while many of my older aunts and uncles were still alive to provide tales and information about the family's origins. He had managed to trace the Pellmans and Schimmels back one more generation: To William Henry Pellman and his wife Lizzie Meier, and Joseph Schimmel and Mary Margaret Trum. This added another generation and two more surnames to our list, but still didn't produce our immigrant ancestors. It was also the point at which the search took on a whole new level of difficulty. In every branch of the family, the trail simply came to an end with my great-great-grandparents. No one in our family had any records or memories of prior generations, Ancestry.com had no earlier records, nor did Genealogy.com or other online resources, and every government office we contacted gave us the same answer: "Our records don't go back that far."

For a few months, it looked like our journey had come to an end, and all we had to show for our effort and expense was a list of dead-end surnames representing the major branches of our family tree: Pellman, Jenner, Phelps, Schimmel, Meier, and Trum.

I posted inquiries on every genealogy message board I could find online. Occasionally, someone would reply, but usually with information about subsequent generations or additional details about those I had already identified. For months, we found nothing that shed light on previous generations or who had been the first immigrant in one of our major family lines. I was beginning to give up hope of ever solving this mystery.

Our first major breakthrough would come from a divine source ... the Jenner Family Bible!