Another Presidential Cousin But Not the One I Was Looking For!

* I want to mention here the passing of First Lady Barbara Bush first off and send my condolences to her family and close friends(of which she had many of each).  I always thought she was a breath of fresh air in the rarefied atmosphere of American politics and political families.  A classy and strong woman, devoted to her family above all else.  A good example in the world.....and that all was years before I had any inkling I was related to her in any way. ;-)

R.I.P. Barbra Pierce Bush (8 Jun 1925-17 Apr 2018).

So I have this hobby obsession called genealogy.  I didn't start on this journey until about 10 years ago after my kids were mostly grown.  Before then I didn't have the time needed to devote to hunting up ancestors.

One of my fun missions within my genealogy meanderings is to see if I can hook my family tree macrame up to every US President......from George Washington to Donald Trump so far.

Some of these men have been easy to connect to since my mother's family lines go back to some of the earliest European settlers in America, the Jamestown Colony of Virginia.
Most mom's people never left Virginia once they got over here on the ships that brought them and her roots are deeply embedded in Virginian soil and Virginia official(as well as unofficial)records are accessible on line and there are so many family genealogy books written on many of these lines I have so it's been relatively easy to connect up with some Presidents.  It helps that 7 of our US presidents were also born in Virginia(Ohio comes second with claiming 6 US Presidents as native sons).

After about 5 years I found that I am cousins with Laura Lane Welch, known to the world as Laura Bush.......

Laura Lane Welch Bush is my 7th cousin 1 x removed.
Without going through the whole line lets just note the pertinent parts.....
Her 6x GGandfather was William Allen and her 5 x GGrandfather was Valentine Allen.  Valentine's sister was Susanna Allen, who is my 6x GGrandmother.  This makes us 7th cousins and Laura is one generation ahead of me so 1 x removed from me.

While doing the research involved to hook up all the Presidents to me it seemed that I am more directly related to many of our First Ladies and related by marriage to our Presidents.

So since I've already got First Lady Laura Bush in my fold I noted that I am related to George Walker Bush(George Bush 43)by marriage(husband of my 7th cousin) and to George Herbert Walker Bush(George Bush 41)also by marriage(father in-law of my 7th cousin).

Since it is well known that GHW Bush's wife, Barbara Pierce Bush is a descendant/cousin of President Franklin Pierce(#14)-they are 4th cousins 4 x removed and share a common ancestors in Thomas Pierce and his wife Elizabeth Cole.

So I began tracking down my Franklin Pierce connections last weekend......

Nothing seems to be panning out as I tracked back, expanding his tree and tracing back from his ancestors into New England until I got back to the European side of things.
Nothing.  No straightforward connection.  I bookmarked Franklin Pierce and decided to trace up GHW Bus and GWBush's line to see if we share ancestry that's closer than marriage to 7th cousins Laura Welch Bush.

And ding ding ding.....I found one!

George Herbert Walker Bush(41) turns out is my 10th cousin.

His GGrandmother was Harriet Eleanor FAY from Savannah Georgia.
Harriet's Grandmother was Clarissa Mundford.
Clarissa's Grandmother was Elizabeth Bolling.
Elizabeth's Grandmother was Ann Meriwether Stith.
Ann's Grandfather was Major John Drury Stith who arrived in America in 1656 making John Drury Stith GWH Bush's 9th Great Grandfather.

John Drury Stith is my 9th Great Grandfather as well.

John Stith's line to me.........

Maj. John Drury STITH I(1631-1694)
9th great-grandfather
Drury STITH(1670-1740)
son of Maj. John Drury STITH I
Anne STITH(1700-)
daughter of Duruy STITH
Ephraim Stith PARHAM(1723-1793)
son of Anne STITH
Jane PARHAM(1738-1804)
daughter of Ephraim Stith PARHAM
Joseph Hunter MASON(1776-1854)
son of Jane PARHAM
Sarah "Sallie" MASON(1805-1854
daughter of Joseph Hunter MASON
Mary Agnes DRISKILL(1837-1894)
daughter of Sarah "Sallie" MASON
Robert William HARPER(1881-1961)
son of Mary Agnes DRISKILL
Wirt Ross HARPER(1909-1968)
son of Robert William HARPER
Carole Frances HARPER(1934-2000)
daughter of Wirt Ross Harper
"Sluggy"

So just add another generation onto GHW Bush's line and George Walker Bush is my 10th cousin.

And Barbara Pierce becomes the wife of my 9th cousin GHWBush and the mother of my 10th cousin GWBush.

At this point the closest I can get to being related to Franklin Pierce is the wife of my 9th cousin(mother of my 10th cousin)who is 4th cousin 4 x removed of Franklin Pierce.

I'm working on a connection to Franklin Pierce now through George Washington's lines though so might find something cousin-like there other than by marriage. Did you know that if you "hook-up" to Washington's ancestry you are related in some degree to practically all the US Presidents?  George's lines won't get you related to Martin Van Buren or Donald Trump and maybe a couple others but it's amazing how all these men share ancestry!


Score card of Presidents/First Ladies related to me so far......

* George Washington 11th cousin 8 x removed
* Thomas Jefferson 5th cousin 9 x removed
* Zachary Taylor  7th cousin 5 x removed
* Edith White Bolling Wilson(Woodrow Wilson's second wife)9th Cousin 5 x removed
* George H W Bush 9th cousin
* George W Bush  10th cousin
* Laura Lane Welch Bush  7th cousin 1 x removed

Sluggy, ancestor hunter

The Great Summer Road Trip of 2013......Day Six

 

Continuing on with this saga......

On Sunday morning we rolled out of Mattoon Illinois and headed South toward our destination for that day, a small town outside Nashville, Tennessee.

Not far into the day's drive, we spotted these strange white lookout towers in a field.....

I think it was a corn field.
Anybody know what that is all about?

Then we passed through this little town....

I snapped the photo too late to get the other sign to the right of the town sign that claims to be the birthplace of this guy......

 

 

Oh goody! Another water tower.....

Hey!  That's a lot with old oil drilling/pumping equipment in Newton Illinois.....

 

And outside of town there were oil derricks pumping away in the corn fields.....

 

We passed from Illinois, into Indiana, crossing the Wabash River.....

 

And while at the Tourist Information Center I saw this.......

Oh crap!
Is there any state around here not infected with "Lincoln-itis"?!

Back in the car and shortly we crossed the Ohio River.....

And then we were in Kentucky....

 .....where we stopped for lunch at a place called Grandy's in the town of Owensboro.





After a quick fast food-y lunch we hit the road again, going through Bowling Green, where I got another photo for my Water Tower Collection, only I still had the camera on movie mode from our lunch stop so you get to hear me swear on this quick clip.....




Here's the lame still photo I did end up getting......

After Bowling Green another water tower for my collection in Franklin KY.....

Then we passed by Kentucky Downs.....

 

And no, we didn't stop and bet on any horse races.

We hit the open road for a bit once we crossed the border into Tennessee.....

 

Just so you know, we were here in Tennessee to visit my first friend in life, Marsha.
Our parents lived next door to each other when we were just babies so I consider her my first friend.

Here we are many years ago at my 2nd Birthday party.....

Marsha is in the middle with the "deer in the headlights" look and I am the hambone on the right mugging for the camera....

Anyway, Marsha now lives in Tennessee with her DH Parker and we reconnected in 2013 via Facebook, which led to an offer "to come visit if you ever get by this way", so when we knew we were going to be in the general vicinity in August we made plans to come visit.
I don't think I had seen Marsha since my mother's funeral in 2000.

After arriving in Tennessee, we crossed the Cumberland River on a fairly rickety bridge.....

We made a wrong turn, somewhere after driving by Reba McEntire's old Tennessee estate.....

Of course, we weren't up in the air, so the view was more like this....

 

We did see a neat jet while we were somewhere circling Nashville lost on a back road.....

 

 

About 20 minutes after passing this jet TWICE, we got straightened out and found Marsha's house.

We had a yummy dinner she fixed us, then talked and drank and made up for lost time that night, and I didn't even think to take one photo or movie that evening.
Silly me.
But aren't you secretly glad I didn't? ;-)

I did think to haul out my computer to download this mess of photos and empty my camera and check emails.
While I had it out, I checked my Ancestry account and one thing let to another(as they will do)and we got to talking about ancestors and family stuff.  Marsha then pulled out a big manila envelope that her DH had with some research someone in his family had done on Parker's ancestors.  I pawed through it a bit and soon discovered that......are you ready for this?.....I am related to Marsha's husband!

Does this shit happen to anybody else besides me?!?! lolz

He has an interesting family tree as I've done a bit more research on it since August.

He is related to Earl Hamner, who wrote the book "Spencer's Mountain" which was made into a movie, that became the basis for the TV series "The Waltons".  Parker was aware of this family connection though I haven't been able to find the direct link yet, though his Hamners are from the same area as the Earl Hamner line.
But I have since found that Parker is related to Patrick Henry's wife(Dorothea Dandridge) and his 7 x Great Grandfather was the Uncle of Martha Dandridge Custis who later married George Washington.

So he is a 1st cousin 7x removed of the 1st First Lady of the USA.

Unfortunately I am not related to Parker through any of these lines.

I am related to him through Captain Samuel Snead and Alice Gallimore though I haven't done any work on his particulars of this ascent to verify the claim yet.
This happens to be the same line that Sonya Ann and I are related through.
So if you are reading this SA, my childhood friend's Hubs is related to us both.  8-))

The hours passed quickly with some more drinks and chatter and it was time to hit the bed all too quickly.

I did remember to take a shot or two with Marsha on her back porch before we left the next morning.....

Then we packed ourselves back into the car for what was going to be a very long day of driving with a couple of stops along the way.

We waved goodbye to Marsha.....

And we were off again!
Another day another adventure......

Sluggy

Perfecting My Wave

When I get silly I like to refer to myself in the third person when conversing.
You know......like when I disapprove of something and am talking to someone, I'll say, "We are not amused".

That sort of thing.
I'm just that silly.

Well come to find out, wanting to talk in the third person might be imbedded somewhere deep in my dna.

A few months ago I traced, via paper trail,(sources range from excellent to dubious though), my maternal genealogy back to European royalty.
Most of the connections are NOT sourced by me but taken from other trees of people I appear to be related to.

That gentleman in Erie, PA who I found I am related to via a maternal Great Grandfather's line(my mother's mother's father's line)and corresponded with about 5 years ago, is part of the Vassar/Vasser family of VA.  This line stretches back to the first immigrant to the New World, John Vasser who arrived at Jamestown in 1635.  Old John V. happens to be one of my 9th Great Grandfathers.
That's all well documented and many ancestors are right proud of that lineage.

But I turned my attention to John Vasser's wife awhile ago, Elizabeth Dowe(other spelling variations are Dow and Dew).
She also came to VA in 1635.
Her parents were Christopher Dowe and Elizabeth Franklin from England.
I traced Elizabeth's maternal line back 3 generations to an Ann Hare.
She was the daughter of Thomas Popy Hare.
I traced Thomas' paternal line back 4 more generations to a John Hare.
He married Jane or Joan de Neville, who was the daughter of Ralph de Neville and Joan de Beaufort, the Countess of Westmorland.
Joan de Beaufort was the daughter of John of Gaunt, 1st Duck of Lancaster, of the Plantagenet house of England.
Yes, my ancestor was one of the bastard children of John of Gaunt and his mistress Kathryn Swynford(who he eventually married).
This line leads me back through the Plantagenet rulers of England all the way back to William the Conqueror(born 1024), who appears to be one of my 29th Great Grandfathers.
So even that line of my ancestry leads back to France.
I tell you I am finding all kinds of ancestors going back to France once I started rooting around deep enough in my tree branches.

My direct ancestor rulers are William(the Man), Henry I, Henry II, John I, Henry III, Edward I II and III,  and then I drop off into the minor nobility after John of Gaunt and upper classes of English society, before hopping a boat to America.
But being descended from the Plantagenet line means I am remotely related to all the rulers of England down through Liz II.
Do you think I can use my "connection" to the House of Windsor to get a peek "up close and personal" of the new royal baby? 8-)

Whoop dee doo I hear you say about all those stuffy royalty folks......
Yah, that's sort of my reaction as well.

But it still doesn't keep me from enjoying this cute little song from a BBC series called "Horrible Histories" that I found episodes for on You Tube.

Can't we all use a silly little tune to remember the Rulers of England by? lolz
Enjoy!





 Sluggy
H.N.S.R.M (Her Not So Royal Majesty)