Ida Rene Bryant

Ida Rene Bryant, my great grandmother, was born in 1868 to Eley and Margaret (Cobb) Bryant in Southhampton County, Va.  Her siblings were Charles, Mary, William, and Gattie Jane, and a twin sister, Ariadne.  I have traced the Bryant and Cobb families back to around 1700 in Southhampton and Isle of Wight Counties.

It appears that Ida was married to a man named Williams, and was widowed before marrying William Butler. (She had an earlier marriage to Llewellyn Eley at age nineteen, possibly annulled). Ida Rene and William Butler (a train engineer) lived in Lynchburg for a time.  They had a live-in servant named Susan Austin according to the 1900 census.  Ida had three sons with William Butler:  Earl, William, and Rawley.  [Earl was 3 years old when they married; William Jr. died at age 19]. The story goes that Ida actually met George Abbott when he was only ten. Her brother William T. Bryant was married to George's sister Bonnie. Anyway, George was only 21 when he married Ida Rene; she was 35.  She and George had three daughters, Miriam, Jacqueline, and Audrey.  They also had a son, George Wright Abbott, Jr. who died in infancy.

Ida, center, with George (mustache) and daughters Miriam, Jacqueline, and Audrey.

"Pops" (?) and Ida

Ida Rene

Ida and grandchildren, including my father,
John Beverly Zaun (front).

Ida's twin, Addie, married Blucher Fletcher and settled in the Blackwater area of what is now Virginia Beach.  Blucher was 20 years older than Addie and fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War.  They had a son, Blucher "Bluke", and a daughter, Ruth, who was mentally disabled.  On an interesting note, Addie's and Ida's descendants who live in Virginia Beach today have crossed paths and connected with each other in various ways through business, community, and church.  The family resemblances are uncanny, especially with the redheads.

Addie and Blucher

Addie

Ida died in 1933 at age 65.  George lived another 26 years.  Near the end of his life, George Abbott "Gramps" told his daughters that their mother was "quite a woman."

*postscript:  my newfound cousin, Matt, who I met through Ancestry, is a descendant of Ida from her marriage to William Butler.  This kind of connection is part of what makes Ancestry research so rewarding!

Reverend Orrin Bishop Judd

Zaun > Powell > Judd

If this blog emphasizes the fame and notoriety in our family lineage, it's because the more colorful characters more immediately come to mind. This post is no exception... meet Orrin Bishop Judd, the grandfather of my great grandmother Nannie Zaun (Georgia Powell).

Orrin Judd was born in 1816 in Hartford, Connecticut.  He grew up in a middle class home "removed alike from the evils of affluence and want." (Memoirs and Remains of Rev. Willard Judd).  He was the ninth of ten children - seven sons and three daughters with two decades between the ages of oldest and youngest.  He graduated from Madison University which later became Colgate University. Succeeding generations of "Orrin Judds" also attended college there.  The current Orrin Judd, who is the great great grandson of our Orrin and his third wife Susanna, maintains a blog called "BrothersJudd" in which he writes about his family's tradition:

"The Reverend Orrin Bishop Judd graduated from Madison which became Colgate and was a trustee.  
His son, Orrin Reynolds Judd, was a trustee of Colgate.  
His son, Orrin Grimmell Judd, went to Colgate and was a trustee.  
His son, The Reverend Orrin Dolloff Judd, went to Colgate-Rochester Seminary. 
His son, yours truly, went to Colgate." 
 (http://brothersjuddblog.com/archives/2008/05/fairest_theme_of_all_our_lays.html)

Rev. Orrin Bishop Judd D.D., L.L.D., was a respected Baptist theologian and author, as well as servant in both public and private office.  He wrote a translation of the New Testament (Matthew ch. 1-3), and many other works including a biography on the life, religious experiences, and teachings of his brother, Rev. Willard Judd.

(https://archive.org/details/memoirsandremai00conegoog)  

He founded the New York Chronicle, which he edited for many years (The Magazine of Christian Literature, volumes 5-6). 

Other works listed here:  http://www.worldcat.org/identities/lccn-no97-37833.  

Orrin was quoted at the beginning of this scholarly work:  

However, on the more human side, Orrin was married three times, and made front page news in the New York Times (April 19 and 26, 1868) because of a scandalous divorce from his second wife - our ancestor - Elizabeth MacDonald.  Her son-in-law testified that Elizabeth, who herself was a writer for the New York Tribune, was "treated with the most revolting cruelty," and that her husband beat and starved her and kept her from seeing her children.  In her own testimony, Elizabeth says that when she had only been married a week when she discovered that Orrin's "love of money was his besetting sin." He would not give her money for household incidentals, even refusing to supply his aging mother, who lived with them, with sufficient underclothing.  Elizabeth took off her own underclothing for the "venerable lady" and as a consequence took ill herself.  She accused Orrin of adultery, and the testimony of offenses and tawdry details of their personal lives goes on for entire pages of the newspaper. 

Egad.

The 1880 census in Brooklyn, NY, Orrin's occupation is "6th Ave E.RR." (elevated railroad).  The 6th Ave. E.RR was constructed in 1878.  I have not confirmed positively that this is the same Orrin Bishop Judd.

Powell Family circa 1895

Soon after I started doing research on Ancestry.com, another researcher contacted me asking if I had information about her husband's ancestor, Jefferson Monroe Powell.  She had posted some family photos on her family tree and offered to share them with me.  One photo in particular took my breath away.  Several generations of Powells are pictured in front of a house in Henrico, Va.  There are two generations of adults in the photo, children of various ages, a dog and a goat.  An infant sits precariously on the top of a tall fence post, the mother barely within reaching distance.  A young girl standing at the gate is unmistakably my great grandmother, Georgia Powell. But I stared and stared at the young man at the right side of the photo... he is a dead ringer for my father.  Funny, I'd always thought my father was a Zaun through and through, but there's no doubt the Powell genes are very strong.

Notes from the owner of the original photo:
Susan Eastman (2018)
Hi! I am still researching and enjoying it! I hope you are too. :) The note I have on the photo is that RJ (Robert) Powell is the youngest child on the fence in white on the right and the photo is in 1895. I believe that it is Jefferson and Marie sitting on the left. I don't know who the elderly man is or who the young man on the right is. I believe Ada is standing by RJ, Georgia would be the girl standing in white, Lenora would be the young girl on left on the fence, Harry with the goat, Archibald with the dog. This is before the youngest two boys were born.

My response to her:

tzaustin (2026)
Eight years since we last communicated! I am still puzzling over this photo - which I am immensely grateful to have thanks to you. I wanted to update you on Jefferson Monroe Powell's father, George James Powell. A few years ago, another Powell cousin visited the graves of George and Mary Ellen (Stevens) Powell. George is buried under the name: "George Littleton Powell." He died in 1870. He had been captured POW on April 6, 1865, just three days before Appomatox. Of course, one new finding leads to more questions.. why is George buried with the wrong middle name? Anyway, we can eliminate the possibility that George is the old man in the photo. It could be one of Jefferson's older brothers and the young man could be the nephew...? Still working on it.

Bethlehem Cemetery

My great grandparents, John Adam and Elizabeth Zaun, came to America from Germany in 1867.  I had heard of them, but knew nothing at all about them.  Last fall, I discovered online that they were buried in Bethlehem Cemetery in Richmond.  This was a surprise -  I  previously had no idea where they had lived or died.  Furthermore, it said the cemetery was on Penick Road.  That road was very familiar to me, as it was the street address of my great grandparents.  When I was growing up, my family made the pilgrimage to the little house on Penick Road to see "Nannie and Poppoo" about twice a year.  I wrote them letters regularly as a child, so the address was permanently forged in my memory.

In November 2013, my sister and her husband and I were on our way to a relative's birthday party in the Richmond area, so we decided to stop at the cemetery to see if we could find the graves.  It was a tiny cemetery and many of the stones were very old and illegible.  But as we searched, we found other ancestors' graves.  Everywhere we turned, it seemed, we saw another family name!  Powell, Abbott, Lukhard, Bryant, Zaun, Wright... we even found the graves of infants that we never knew existed.  I took pictures of all of their tombstones.

When I got home and uploaded the photos, I noticed an astonishing coincidence.  My photo of my great grandmother's grave, Ida Rene Abbott, was taken from the same angle as a photo taken in 1933, the day she was buried.  The same shot, 80 years apart! The church in the background looked the same.

In another old photo in my collection, my great great grandfather Jefferson Monroe Powell is standing next to a plaque honoring my great great grandmother Powell - I realized that this picture was taken at the same church.

Douglas Avenue (click on link at bottom of this post for the most recent info)

I am delighted to have finally solved another baffling mystery about my maternal grandmother's parentage.  All her life, my mother has believed that her maternal grandfather was named "Augustus Douglas Allen," because that's what her mother told her it was. In months of research, however, I have never come across that exact name.  I did find many records for "Augustus Dozier Allen" and "Augustus D. Allen," but I could never be sure that I had found the man I was looking for.

Tonight, after reviewing the information on Mom's side of our family tree, I was showing her some of the documentation I had gathered on her family.  I pulled up a Wichita City Directory from 1911, and sure enough, there was "Augustus D. Allen."  It took a minute or two to realize what I was seeing underneath his name, but it slowly registered... his business address (A. D. Allen Real Estate and Loans) was...drum roll...

                         121 Douglas Avenue! *

My grandmother, that sad, abandoned little girl, had remembered only bits and pieces of information about her childhood in Wichita, and she put them together as best she could.  Now, it all makes sense.  

Augustus lived with his family in Wichita.
Eva was sent to a hospital for the insane at Old Fort Supply (near Woodward) in Oklahoma.
Ethelyn (Teresa) was sent to an orphanage Paris, Texas, then worked as a nurse in Oklahoma City.
Augustus continued to live in Wichita and married Emma in 1905.
Note the proximity of the locations though they are in three different states.

I do not take for granted that I can access all the information I need from my living room couch.  Up to very recently, people had to take long sabbaticals and travel all over the country, visiting libraries and courthouses to search through reams of documents for rare nuggets of information about their family's past.  In just a few days I have revealed things about my grandmother's life that she never knew, and could never know, in her entire lifetime.  I pulled up Google Maps, searched for "121 Douglas Avenue" and was virtually transported to the very spot that my great grandfather conducted his successful real estate business.  (It's now a vacant lot in the middle of the city).  Less than a week ago, I knew absolutely nothing about the man and now he is a tangible reality... to me, it's just amazing.

121 E. Douglas Avenue.  Now a vacant lot.

*postscript:  in the process of compiling a timeline of Augustus' life, it became obvious that A. D. Allen Real Estate was established much later than my grandmother would have remembered.  However, in investigating his early work in Wichita, I found that he had worked at the Kansas Bureau of Immigration, also on Douglas Avenue.  This is what my grandmother would have recalled from her year or so in Wichita with her mother and father. 

Update - January 2, 2015:  New information had brought up questions about the above story.  See the updated entry, "My orphan grandmother," for the newest information on Augustus D. Allen:  http://descenddance.blogspot.com/2013/12/un-common-ancestry.html

Common Threads

When I began doing research on my family tree, I wondered if I would find any shocking surprises like being cousins with my spouse or something. I actually did find a distant connection, both by surname and geographical location...but there was no accidental inbreeding as I feared!

I love finding unexpected connections. I discovered that direct ancestors of both of my parents certainly knew each other back in 1652. My paternal 9th great grandfather Thomas Judd was one of the seven founders of the Church of Christ in Farmington, Connecticut, and was a pillar in the church until his death in 1688. His children and grandchildren were baptized there. My maternal 8th great grandparents, Samuel Hickok (distant cousin of Wild Bill) and his wife Hannah, were members of the congregation at the same time and their children were also baptized in that church. There were only 84 proprietors of the town of Farmington at that time, so it was highly likely they knew each other well. 

Also in the 1600's, two of my mother's maternal and paternal lines were entangled together in Gravesend, NY. Thomas Applegate, my 8th great grandfather, came to America from Norfolkshire, England with his wife, Elizabeth. It seems that Thomas and wife both had issues with fiery tempers and loose tongues! Elizabeth was "censured to stand with her tongue in a cleft stick for swearing, reviling, and railing." Thomas was sued for slander by my 8th great grandfather Nicholas Stillwell, who was from a completely different branch of my mother's tree.  (Historical and Genealogical Miscellany: Early Settlers of New Jersey and Their Descendants, Vol. III, by John E. Stillwell, M.D.). 

General Custer keeps popping up in our family stories on both of my mother's maternal and paternal lines. My grandfather's mother, Ada Hall, was teaching school in Fort Lincoln, Dakota Territory, in 1876 when Custer left with his Cavalry for the Little Big Horn. She wrote that she let her students out of class to watch the men leave. Coincidentally, my grandmother's mother, Eva Allen, died in 1911 at Old Fort Supply, a residential hospital that was a former post for Lt. Col. Custer and the 7th U.S. Cavalry in 1868.

These are the stories that keep me addicted to genealogy!

I keep coming across certain common threads in our family history... for example, there are at least two pioneer schoolteachers in our lineage:
1) Ada C Crofford, Fort Lincoln, Dakota Territory, 1876.
2) Anna Lyons Crofford, Liberty Township, Indiana, 1837.
Each began the first school in her territory.

Custer House at Fort Lincoln

Gen. Custer appears in the unrelated stories of both of my maternal grandparents:
1) Ada Crofford, my grandfather's mother (mentioned above), was friends with Mrs. Custer and was teaching school in Fort Lincoln when Custer left for the Little Big Horn.
2) Eva L. Allen, my grandmother's mother, resided in a mental hospital in Oklahoma that was a former "Camp of Supply" from which Custer left to fight the Cheyenne Indians at the Battle of Washita.

I find this kind of thing fascinating.

The Gaspee Affair

We are pretty solidly descended from New England stock.  Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island... much of our lineage can be traced back to these New England colonies.  So many early colonists were related to each other in some way - I have often wondered how many times our genetic lines crossed.

Our direct ancestors include many important colonial leaders.  Descendants of Roger Williams in Providence RI were patriots and conspirators in the early movement against Britain.  These names - Godfrey, Sabin, Greene, Hopkins and Ashton - are commonly found in many early Rhode Island historical accounts. Our own Captain Samuel Godfrey was a participant in the "Gaspee Affair," one of the most significant events leading up to the American Revolution.

Sabins Tavern in Providence was the meeting place of a group of early revolutionaries as they planned an attack on the British ship Gaspee.  The attack took place on June 10th, 1772. The ship was grounded at a spot on the Providence River now known at Gaspee Point.  Eight rowboats full of Providence men quietly approached the ship during the night and burned her.  The ship burned to the waterline before her powder magazine exploded.  This incident is recognized as the first act of violence toward Britain, predating the Boston Tea Party and the "shot heard 'round the world."  Britain never learned the identity of the culprits.

If you want to know more, check this out:  http://www.gaspee.org/

Providence is now on my bucket list of places to visit.

Abbott > Whitfield > Godfrey > Greene > Sayles > Roger Williams.
Abbott > Whitfield > Godfrey > Ashton > Williams > Roger Williams.