Bryant - Fletcher Namesake

Cousin Charlie Fletcher told me that he was named after our mutual great uncle Charles Bryant. Charles Bryant was a "dapper" fellow according to Charlie Fletcher. I have written about him in a couple of blog entries here.

There is no denying the genetic relationship, even two generations apart. Aunt Teeny just this week sent me a photo that I had never seen before of Charlie Bryant sitting in a chair in the backyard. The resemblance to his namesake is stunning.

Two "dapper" fellows: Charles Bryant, b. 1859, and Charles Fletcher, b. 1926

Allens and Bacons of Kentucky and Virginia

A professional genealogist suggested that I trace my Allen ancestry back to Virginia by building on the Allen family known to have lived in Kentucky. I have exhausted all research on the Allens of Kentucky without finding the one I am looking for... that is, John Watson Allen.

Here is what I know:

1. Augustus D. Allen, born in 1859 in Hancock County, Illinois, is verified as my maternal great grandfather. 
2. Augustus' father is Robert Scott Allen, born 1797 in Virginia, also a verified fact.
3. In brief bio in The History of Hancock County, Rose Nash Spitler claims that "casual research" into her family history revealed that John Watson Allen was the father of Robert Scott Allen, her grandfather. Rose did not know much about her birth family - she was a foster child from a young age. In this biography, Rose claims that according to family lore, John Watson Allen was a childhood playmate to the famous Revolutionary War hero, Ethan Allen. Unverified.
4. Robert Scott Allen lived in Covington, Kenton County, Kentucky, before moving to Illinois. He married a Elizabeth Highlands from Ohio, just across the river. Kenton County is adjacent to Mason County.
5. There is a John Allen, Baptist clergyman, who lived in Mason County in 1850. He lived with a family named Bacon. He is the right age to be Robert Scott Allen's father.

One thing I have learned is that "family lore" is not always reliable. However, even if the stories are obviously wrong, the details are often merely a slight distortion of the facts. In other words, the truth is there, you just have to know how to interpret it.  I have come to the conclusion that the Revolutionary War hero who played with John Watson Allen as a child was actually probably John "Jack" Jouett, who also came from Virginia and lived near the Allens in Kentucky toward the end of his life.  

Today I have had a break-through of sorts. I still have not connected all the dots, but have made some promising discoveries. I started out by writing out a research question. (The quality of one's research is determined by how well the question is written): 

"Is John (Watson) Allen, the father of Robert Scott Allen, the same person as John Allen, Baptist clergyman, who lived in Mason County, KY in 1850 with the Bacon family?"

 In the 1850 U. S. Census for Mason County, KY, John Allen, age 81, lived with Elizabeth Collier Bacon, age 61 (widow of John Glenn Bacon), and two of her children:  John Glenn Bacon, Jr. age 23, and Tyree Lydall Bacon, age 19. Also living with them was a man named George Heft, who appears to be a farmhand. This was a puzzling discovery - there seemed to be no familial relationship between John Allen and the Bacons or to the Colliers. But the name "Lydall Bacon" hit me like a ton of bricks! Definitely an old Virginia family name.

The first step of my research strateby was to trace John Glenn Bacon back to Virginia and see if I could find an Allen connection. Bingo! Here is a partial tree showing the relationships (Roman numerals represent the generations):

I.  John Bacon (1675-1742) m. Susanna Parke (1688-1778) of New Kent County, Virginia
                                         
II. Lydall Bacon (1717-1775) m. Mary Ann Allen (1726-1816) of New Kent County
                                                                             
III. Lucy Bacon (1744-1826) m. Charles Allen (1744-1775) of Lunenburg County, Va.
      Sarah Bacon (1753-1796)  m. Col. John Glenn (1752-1799) of Charlotte County, Va.        
      Langston Bacon (1746-1831) m. Mary Anne Glenn (1749-1823) of Charlotte/Lunenburg

IV. John Glenn Bacon (1782-1846), son of Langston Bacon, m. Elizabeth Collier (1789-1870) of Charlotte County, Virginia; moved to Mason County, Kentucky before 1840.
   
John Allen, clergyman, lived with this last Generation IV family in Mason County, Kentucky. He would be of the same generation as III. above. I checked, and Charles Allen did not have a brother named John, so there must be another Allen-Bacon connection somewhere.

The coolest thing about these discoveries is the fact that I recently visited St. Peters Church in New Kent County and had taken a photo of a memorial gravestone for the Bacon family.

Generation I:  John Bacon and wife Susanna Parke.
This stone reveals two more generations before them.
George Bacon was the original immigrant who came over from London.

The next step in my research strategy was to find a connection to John "Jack" Jouett. Since the Glenn family had multiple connections with the Bacons, I started there. Here is the partial tree showing what I found:

I. James Glenn, Jr (1664-1747) m. Mourning Winn (1668-1750)

II. Tyree Glenn (1704-1763) (son of James) m. Mary Roe
     Mourning Glenn (1702-1755) (dau. of James) m. Col. Robert Harris

III. Mary Anne Glenn (1748-1823) (dau. of Tyree) m. Langston Bacon (1746-1831)
      Mourning Glenn Harris (1732-1805) (dau. of Robert) m. John "Jack" Jouett (1730-1802)

IV. John Glenn Bacon (1782-1846) (son of Langston) m. Elizabeth Collier
      Mary Anne Mourning Jouett (1765-1833) (dau. of Jack) m. Thomas Allin (another Allen connection!)

V. "Tyree Lydall Bacon", born 1830 in Mason County, KY, was a son of John Glenn Bacon and Elizabeth Collier, his name connecting both families' histories back to Virginia.
                                                                                             
Again, John Allen would be of Generation III, the same as Jack Jouett. The "family lore" that Rose related may hold some truth! Now if I can just find out how John Allen is related to all these folks, especially to Elizabeth Collier Bacon. I also need to verify that this John Allen is actually my 3X great grandfather.

Letter from Ida to Bluke Jr.

Cousin Terry sent me a copy of a letter she found in some old family papers. It was a letter from Ida Rene Abbott to her nephew Blucher Fletcher, Jr in 1909. It took some time to transcribe the letter, and there are still a few words missing, but here it is:

September 2nd 1909

Dear Bluke,
Your letter received and glad to hear from you. I know you have found it lonely, no one but yourself in the house. Where did sister go. She didn’t want me that is sure. I wrote and told her to let me know what Sunday she was [in] Norfolk, and I would go down for the day. So she got off and didn’t say a word. Yes, Bluke, we will be glad to have you any time. All you got to do is say what Sunday you will come and we willl meet you at the depot. Would love to see you. Write and tell us when you will come. Bring your lady friend along. Will make .... plan for you as possible. It is $1.50 round trip just for the day. Come and stay a week and go back the next Sunday. It is fine up here. You will not want to go back any more. I am going to look for a letter saying that you will come. Love to sister and Bluke and receive a large share for yourself. Let me hear from you at once. Your loving aunt, Ida Abbott

My questions... What caused the estrangement between sisters? Bluke would have been about 19 years old - who was his "lady friend?"

To appreciate what it took to decipher this letter, here is the original:

1205 Flobert Drive, Part One 1959-1965

When I was five years old and my mother was pregnant with my sister, my parents had a modest brick home built in Princess Anne County, way out in the country, far outside the city where my father worked and where my grandparents lived. The development, called Bellamy Manor, was owned by the Bellamy family. It was only a partially cleared property. The part of the development behind the manor house was called "the Hill." You either lived on the Hill or in the Woods. We lived in the Woods. Most of the Kempsville area around Bellamy Manor was farmland. There was a strong Mennonite population in Kempsville and much of the farmland was devoted to dairy cows.

After the Bellamy property was developed, the big white Manor house remained, facing Kempsville Road, until the "new" library was built around 1988. You can still see the ancient trees behind the library that give away the original location of the house.

A History of the Kempsville Library

The Kempsville Area Library is built on the site of the historic "Bellamy Manor" Plantation, circa 1715-1959. The 9.7 acres of land was sold to the City of Virginia Beach in 1967 for $50,000. On April 29, 1969 the Kempsville Area Library first opened its doors. Appropriately, the event took place during National Library Week. The building was 6,000 square feet and opened with a collection of 7,000 volumes to serve a population of 20,000 in the Kempsville area. At that time, the Kempsville Area Library was the fourth branch of the Virginia Beach Public Library System. As the Kempsville population grew, so did the business at the library. The year 1984 brought 239,400 visits to the Kempsville Area Library alone! By 1985, the library was serving a population of more than 65,000 and housed a collection of 53,000 volumes. By August 1986, plans for a new library building came to fruition. The original library building would become the Fourth Precinct police station. The community participated in planning the new building. A survey of library users helped determine the features that the residents felt were important. Ground Breaking ceremonies were held on October 20, 1988. The construction of the building began almost immediately and its entire outside structure was completed in just a matter of months! In January 1990 the new Kempsville Area Library opened, ready and eager to serve the residents of Kempsville!

http://www.superpages.com/bp/virginia-beach-va/kempsville-area-library-L0137952191.htm

My first memories of Bellamy Manor

There were no proper roads the first year or so, just ruts in the grassy lanes cut into the heavy woods. Some of the roads further back in the woods had no houses built on them yet and were great places to hike.

The woods smelled heavily of wild creatures - to this day the scent is distinct in my memory. And rattlesnakes galore! We killed many rattlesnakes in our first years in the Woods. I almost stepped on a coiled rattlesnake while playing tag in the Downs' yard. I heard the rattling and thought it was the water spigot. I looked down and screamed for help. Mrs. Edge rushed over with a 22 shot gun and blew it away right at my feet.

Old Mr. Bellamy came around in his big white car through the development periodically. He knew all of the residents and spoke to the children as he rode by. He told one child, "you've grown two ax handles since I last saw you!" At Halloween, everyone knew there were candied apples handed out at the manor house.

There were only a few houses back then on that quarter mile stretch called Flobert Drive. We were near the end of the street (the "turn around").  Our house was the third house in a row next to the Edges and Downs'. Our lot sizes were near a half acre. We had about fifty trees in our yard. The Gaskins family lived in a big house in the middle of three fenced in lots about halfway down the road. They had a horse, and also had a pony-sized black German Shepherd named "Mount" who charged menacingly at everyone who dared to go down the street.  The Watson family lived on the corner at the entrance to Flobert Drive. Our bus stop was at the foot of their driveway. Their oldest daughter Priscilla was our babysitter.

Hunters were used to letting their dogs loose in the woods to run. Mr. Jones would drive his pack of baying hounds to the end of our street and release them. He'd come back some time later to pick them up. His dogs were named after U. S. Presidents; invariably, Truman would be left behind and Mr. Jones would have to come pick him up the next day from our front porch.

Sometimes we would find cows or horses wandering in our yard. We'd have to call the owners to come get them. Once when my mother was hanging out clothes, a fox ran under the clothesline followed shortly thereafter by hounds and a hunter on horseback.

My best and only friend was the next door neighbor, also named Teresa. She introduced me to things I had never known, such as cussing and sex (on a very limited scale) and eating animals that were killed in the woods. Her mother had a heart as big as the moon, but could cuss like a sailor and didn't care who heard. They also had whiskey in the house and tobacco. Once she made homemade root beer that accidentally fermented and made all the neighborhood kids drunk. The Edges had their house built toward the front of their lot so there was a huge plot in the back for a garden and grape vines. I learned to shell butter beans and have grape skin fights. I also learned to be more physically daring - Teresa would swing as high as the sky and fly off into a hill-sized dirt pile. We made forts out of hay bales and played there all day. The Edges had a nasty dog named Jigger who bit everyone. Back then, getting bit by Jigger was just part of a normal day. My cousin Calvin biked his newspaper route with Jigger attached to one leg.

As more folks moved into the neighborhood, my circle of friends grew. We all knew each other and were in each others' homes as much as our own. As long as I came home when the cowbell rang, my mother didn't care where I was and never had to worry. My cousins moved into Bellamy Manor four streets away and within easy walking distance. Kids rode their bikes long distances from home - there were no restrictions or boundaries. The "big ditch" on the other side of the Edges' house was the pathway to our friends' homes on all the other streets that ran parallel in the "Woods." We had our secret forts in the woods. We were outside all day long. There was no such thing as air-conditioning so being outdoors was preferable to the stifling house.

... more later...

3319 Brest Avenue

Due to lack of any remarkable research findings to report, I will take this opportunity to share some personal memories of early childhood.

My parents were only 22 and 24 when I was born. Their first home was on Brest Avenue in Norfolk. We lived there until just before my sister was born. I was five years old. Here is the house today... the crepe myrtles and shrubs were not there in 1959. There also appears to be an addition on the back of the house that wasn't there.

3319 Brest Avenue, Norfolk Va.
Google Maps, December 2016

I have few but very distinct memories of being in this little house...

Sitting at the kitchen table and discussing possible names for my new kitten. I was probably only two or three years old. Apparently, my mind was only on the food because we named the cat Applesauce.

Breaking my leg falling out of the high chair.

Running crying from the kitchen into the bedroom and into my dad's arms (oddly, I associate this vivid moment with breaking my leg but that does not make sense).

Getting a new dog, a beagle named Butch (wonder what happened to Applesauce?).

The mimosa tree in the backyard, in whose shade we lived and moved in the summertime. I remember having a good sized wading pool where all the neighborhood kids came to swim. My July birthday parties were held at a picnic table under that tree.

My friend David who had a prosthetic leg. He had to take it off to swim in my pool.

My friend (Karen I think) who lived across the street and had a mean dog on a chain in her backyard.

The detached garage that my dad built. I don't remember much about the process of building it, but I do remember clearly what it looked like. If you look closely at the photo above, you can catch a glimpse of it.

Santa Claus (a neighbor dressed up) visiting us in our home and scaring me to death.

A Christmas gift - a large robotic gorilla which came with a cork gun. If you could hit the gorilla in the chest with a cork, it would give a frightening roar and flash its green eyes and start moving menacingly toward you. The thing scared me to death! Isn't it just like my dad to come up with a gift like this for a little girl.

The neighborhood bully who told a group of us younger ones about the "bloody bones" in the window of the creepy house on the corner and scared me to death.

I was a timid child.

My friend Rexanne who lived around the corner (the other way from the creepy house) who shared my same exact birthday. We love to connect about that fact to this day. Coincidentally, she was friends with my future spouse in high school.

My cousins living on the next block (Argonne Avenue). I ran away once and called to my Uncle Sonny to help me cross the street. I don't remember this, but my mother says she was very upset with me.

Sitting in front of the TV every Saturday morning in the living room, patiently watching the test pattern until cartoons came on at 7:30.

I have other memories, such as visiting my grandparents during these early years, but this is the sum total of my memories about living in the house on Brest Avenue.