My working hypothesis has always been that our Lewises were Scots (Clan MacLeod!) or Welsh (Cymru am byth!) But the Internet gives us tools today that genealogists even twenty years ago could only dream of. Searchable databases going back hundreds of years are being made available at an astonishing clip. Just as important, the Internet has made it possible for cousins to find each other and share information. Finding even one more family member from a century or two ago opens a dozen new ways to look for information.
We already knew that William Thomas Lewis, b. 1848, (my 2nd great-grandfather) owned and operated a general store in Frederic, Michigan in the late 1800s. He and his wife Sarah were pioneers to the town. They had eight children, two of whom died in infancy. The oldest, Emmett, b. 1874, was my great-grandfather; his oldest son, Russell Emmett, b. 1900, was my grandfather. (An aside: Grandpa Lewis worked in the family store in Frederic as a young man. I remember him telling me that he discovered while working at the store that he was color blind – a customer asked for some red ribbon, and he gave her blue – something like that. His colorblindness may have saved his life – and the Lewis name - as it probably disqualified him from most types of military service during the First World War. Grandpa Lewis enlisted in the U.S. Army on October 1, 1918, and was released on October 23, 1918. This was long before my own dad was even a twinkle in Grandpa’s eye.)
Cousin Lewis. Emmett’s sister Susannah, b. 1878 married Alexander Harvey, and they built a house in Alba, Michigan, a few miles from Frederic. Susannah’s grandson, Lewis Harvey, still lives in Alba. He is my 2nd cousin, once removed. He is also a bigger genealogy nut than I am, with a massive family tree approaching 17,000 entries, and all kinds of family lore that he has very kindly shared with me.
Cousin Cindy. Emmett’s brother Bill, b. 1894, had four daughters, one of whom had a daughter named Cindy. Cindy is also my second cousin once removed. Cindy has assembled a book with a lot of family information, including, critically, an obituary for the pioneer William Thomas Lewis that told us that he was survived by a sister, Libbie Lewis of Frankford, Ontario. Here is the obituary page Cousin Cindy put together from her research.
We had already known there was a connection between our Lewis family and Canada. There were references to Canadian roots in another obituary, but I didn’t know about William’s sister Libbie, nor did I have any reason to think that William had ever lived in Canada. He supposedly had been born in Watertown, NY – the obit repeats this, but I’ve never been able to find a single record of him being born there. We knew his father’s name was Nicholas (“Country of birth: Unknown,” per the American records), we knew his mother’s name was Margaret, and that she was from Ireland. We knew he had a brother named John, and we were pretty sure he had another brother named Stephen. I speculated in my brick wall post that perhaps William was born out of wedlock, or Nicholas had abandoned the family.
But now we had a province to focus on, and the name of a sister. And, mirabile dictu, here is my sweet family in 1871:
Thomas goes by his middle name in his family. He wasn’t born in New York, nor was his father: they were both born in Ontario. I’ve concluded that the American records about this – as recorded by my great-grandmother, Nora - are just wrong (which is quite common for genealogy records). If we look at the census, there is my aunt Libbie, and my uncle John and my uncle Stephen. And there is my 3rd great-grandfather Nicholas, who was a French Canadian and Roman Catholic. I don’t know yet when his family came over; maybe when the place was still New France. Maybe I’ll never find out. But at least I know where to look now.
And there is my 3rd great-grandmother Margaret from Ireland, properly married, raising a brood of children. And they are just simple farmers, like nearly everyone else in my whole family tree at that time.
That’s the 1871 census. Thank goodness that snapshot was preserved, because by 1872, William had married Sarah and they had moved off to pioneer the town of Frederic. If we look at the 1881 census from the same province, we see the same family, but the older boys have moved away to Michigan, and Libbie is gone.
And once in Michigan, my French Canadian immigrant 2nd great-grandfather William Thomas Lewis laid down roots that would entangle with the Stearns and the Smiths and the Fraziers and the Freelands.
Brick wall solved.
I think we have been pronouncing our name wrong. Shouldn’t it be loo-ee? We are the Fraunch, after all.
No comments:
Post a Comment