The Spirit of the Eagle

On March 17, I attended the most amazing and stirring Eagle Court of Honor I had ever attended. It has been more than a few years since I attended my last Eagle Court. It was when our son Tim received his Eagle award.

The boys with red, white, and blue neckerchiefs are the new Eagle Scouts.

On this night four boys received their Eagle award and one received the Spirit of the Eagle. The young man who received the Spirit of the Eagle was our deceased grandson, Calvin. He died over 3 years ago in a tragic auto accident. Tonight, however, the Eagle Court celebrated, not just Calvin, but the work of 5 young men. The four boys who received their Eagle award had all chosen to wait to do it together and with Calvin. That alone made this a special evening. Each of the boys was justly honored, including Calvin's younger brother, Clayton. Calvin received his award in the middle of the program and I was asked by Calvin's parents to make the presentation. Words fail me as I attempt to describe my emotions on making this award. The honor, the responsibility, the joy of being asked all burst upon me and yet I felt the spirit with me and with all who were there. We knew Calvin and his grandpa Rob were present. Calvin and Clayton are 3rd generation Eagle scouts.

Presentation of Calvin's Eagle Spirit Award to his parents

There were teachable moments in this Eagle court. As each boy received their Eagle award they had the opportunity to present an "Eagle Mentor" award to someone special. Each of the boys picked a leader who had helped them on campouts, with badges and the like. Clayton, however, chose to go his own way. He selected a sister Peterson who had been one of his leaders. She made her day, week, and probably decade. He tried to shake her hand and she wrapped him in her arms and gave a great big hug. We were all taught with that insight from a 14-year old boy.

Clayton's Eagle Award

Each of the new Eagle Scouts also received an Eagle bolo tie from "Carvin Marvin" who has produced these for years. Each one is hand carved and painted. Cole received Calvin's bolo tie.

There was also a leadership group present, called Timberline. Many of the boys participate in it. It is a leadership training program. Calvin went through the training and died before he was able to be a leader. Clayton did the training and served as a leader. Two of the Timberline adult leaders had saved ashes from the last nights' fire for almost 3 years - when Calvin would have served as a leader - and put them in a nice container and presented them to Donna and Chris.

It was a wonderful evening. Spiritually rewarding. Each young man and their families knew they had participated in a special ceremony. The boys may not realize that until much later, but when they do they will appreciate it for what it was.

After we all arrived at home Chris came up to me and handed me an "Eagle Dad" pin and said, "Dad, I won't need this any more. I have one now!" I had placed my Eagle Dad pin in Calvin's casket just before they closed it. At the time it was one of the most treasured mementos I had. I'm glad to have it back. I wanted Chris to have it because Calvin was so close and I felt he would appreciate it.

Clayton with his Grandmothers, Cole in front, and the rest of the family

JoAnn and I look forward to attending many more Eagle Courts of Honor for our grandsons in the future.

Wordless Wednesday - Calvin's Spirit of the Eagle

More to come later

Wordless Wednesday

When Did We Come to America

Not quite 1600, but picture was taken when we were on
Guam, bringing military families to the south Pacific.

The interesting thing about genealogical research is that you have lots of names and when you first begin doing research none of them mean very much to you. In fact, if you go back beyond your grandparents most of us only find strangers. I was aware of 2 of my great grandmothers, but I didn't know them well and by the time I was old enough to understand the value of knowing them they were gone.

I indicated in a previous blog on "Mining Data" that I am delving into our family. I have thus far only scratched the surface and in reality, that scratch can't even be seen unless you look very very closely. Yet, that kinship I am beginning to feel will turn that scratch into a door, a door that will illuminate our ancestors for our future generations - at least I hope it will.

I have about 20 hours of work in just reviewing the McLean and Goff Ancestor Lines. Yet I have found some wonderful information. Some of the nuggets I found include:

• The first Iowa Ancestor from these 2 lines was Jane (Genny) Farnsworth who died in Page County, Iowa in 1749. Tim always likes to know how long the McLean's have been around Iowa. So it seems we've had a presence for 250 years, even if it wasn't in the McLean name.
• Five first-generation Americans were born before 1600: (1) Richard Bidwell, Sr (1577) in Windsor, Hartford, Connecticut; (2) Elizabeth Harris (1595) in Henrico, VA, just inland from Jamestown; (3) Robert King (c. 1595 in Hempstead, NY; (4) Mrs. Cool (how cool is that name) (1522) in Gowanus, Brookly, Kings, NY; and (5) Eli Braconie or Brackhoenige (1574) in New York.
• We have one ancestor, "Ann," who was born in Barbados, West Indies

We are not johnny-come-lately's to America. Our ancestors have been here, in some cases, for almost 2 centuries before the Declaration of Independence. We can all qualify as sons or daughters of the American Revolution.

Where did the McLean and Goff Ancestor Lines come from? I am amazed at our diversity. Never again will I be Irish, or Scottish, or anything other than American. The table below is quite illustrative of the diversity of our ancestors. England, representing almost 64% of our ancestors is clearly our ancestral home, from this limited study. As we get into the Merriam line it will be almost 90% English and the Johns line will not. It has a heavy Dutch influence.

In a future post I'll talk about surnames. As a teaser, the name McLean only appears one time in looking at first-generation ancestors and immigrant ancestors. Our surname could just as easilly have been Smith, Brinson, Steiner, York, Holllingshead, or Amonett, to just name a few. The graphic below (click on it to make it bigger) gives you an idea of all the different surnames that I found just in the McLean, Goff, and part of the Merriam lines. I'm still working on the John's line and trying to finish the Merriam line.

I hope you enjoy reading these as much as I do writing them. As I complete this study I will make the spreadsheets of first-generation Americans and immigrant Americans available to you. But please be patient, this is a work of love and it does take time.

PS - Don't think I'm ignoring the Longcor line, I just haven't gotten that far yet.

Mining Data

The title "mining data" is wholly a research term that, as a university professor, I'm very familiar with. It is a process of looking at existing data and seeing it from a different perspective. Maybe a new perspective or a tangent of an existing perspective. It is an act of creativity, an act of faith, and an act of patience. In research sometimes mining data provides you with nothing new. Other times it may provide you with small nuggets of valuable information. And yet at other times it may open doors for you that were not imagined.

This past week I started a new personal genealogical research project focusing upon our genealogy. Some of the results I will address in companion blogs over the next few weeks and months. However, what I am doing now started is looking at who our first American ancestors were. I wanted to track who came to America, when they came, where they came from, where they died, and who their first offspring were. I call these two groups the "immigrant Americans" and the "first-generation Americans."

Several years ago at Ellis Island in New York looking at
their passenger lists. None of our family went through
Ellis Island - at least not yet in my research.

It seemed like an inordinately simple task, but I was wrong. Any research project has to have a purpose and a methodology. I described the purpose above - to identify our immigrant Americans and our first-generation Americans. The methodology involved going backwards from myself to my grandparents, and JoAnn's grandparents and create categories within those lines. For example there are, in this research, 2 family lines (first level categories) - (1) McLean and (2) Longcor. For the McLean line I identified 4 ancestor lines (2nd level categories) - (1) McLean, (2) Goff, (3) Merriam, and (4) Johns. For JoAnn I went to (1) Longcor, (2) Plaser, (3) Hardie, and (4) Shaw. I could have broken the ancestor lines down even further, but for this research I deemed that appropriate. Okay, I've lapsed into research jargon and I apologize.

Beginning with McLean ancestor line I systematically went backwards looking at males and then females in each line carefully identifying first who was the immigrant American and then working forward to their son or daughter, who was quite literally the first-generation American. In some cases an individual was first-generation American for their mother or father, but not for both since one spouse was an immigrant American and the other was a first, second, or third-generation American.

My initial effort only addressed male immigrant Americans and male or female first-generation Americans. It didn't take me too long before I realized that was inappropriate. For me, the best part about research is learning how to do it better. I went back to the start and gathered immigrant Americans regardless of their sex. That was an essential task since in some cases immigrant Americans married someone who was not an immigrant American (see below).

What have I learned thus far? While much of what I have learned is for future blogs, I can tell you the number of people in our family line who are immigrant Americans is staggering (there is more detail on this in my next blog). From the McLean Ancestor Line I count, thus far, 17 individuals and 12 first-generation Americans. From the McLean ancestor line we have always said we are "Scottish and Irish," but the truth is, in just this portion of the line we have ancestors from Scotland, England, Germany, Switzerland, France, and Barbados. Only 1, yes just one, member of the McLean ancestor line is Scottish. That is 5.8% of immigrant Americans.

I do not have arrival dates, although, if I'm lucky, at some point I may find some of those. Staying within the McLean family line (that is McLean and Goff combined), I find immigrant Americans born as early as 1575 and as late as 1731. The initial first-generation McLean's were born in 1615. The first ancestor with the name "McLean" was born in 1794 in Moore County, NC. We don't know when his father Angus arrived and if you look at ship records the number of Angus McLean/MacLean/McLain arriving is innumerable. Records of the family were kept in the Moore County Courthouse which burned down following the Civil War.

What I am doing is called "qualitative research," and the reason we do it is because it allows us to become intimate with the information (data). I have become very close to this data and feel a kinship with those names, even if I don't know much about them yet. I didn't feel that kinship before I started the project when I was merely looking at charts and tables. I've invested myself in this project and it is capturing me.

Mostly Wordless Wednesday

I used this photo in August, 2011, but it remains one of my favorites. 

My mother took this photo while we lived on Guam. It is a great photo.

Your Genealogical Past

Your Great Grandpa Merriam initiated the study of our family history in the early 1930s when he was living in Chicago, IL. His work has been invaluable to us in charting our family history. It's my intent to share, in an introductory format, some facts about our family history over the next few weeks and months. In doing so I hope I can stimulate you to begin to expand your family history, especially those of your spouses, but also of our own family.

I recently shared "fan charts" of our genealogy that show what we know about the most recent 9 generations. The value of a fan chart is that it can provide a significant overview of our knowledge on a single sheet of paper. At the first generation appears one person (me or mom). At the 2nd generation appears our parents (2 people or 1 family). At the third generation appears 4 people or 2 families. Moving out from the 3rd generation, the number of families doubles at each generation, as does the number of individual. At the 9th generation we have 128 families and 256 individuals (still with me?). Realize this does not count multiple marriages or siblings. Working from the center out there are a total of 255 families represented on the chart and 511 people. When you combine both fan charts (mom and mine) that total 1,022 individuals and 511 families. That is a lot of people in our family history. The following table will be explained in greater detail a future blog.

How are we doing on our family history? Considering how much work Great Grandpa Merriam did, there is still a lot to do. I just created a table and you can see it below. If we go back just 4 generations - 5 generations for our children, then we look pretty good as we are at 100% knowledge of who ancestors were, even if we don't know much about them. However, once we get to generation 6, for a lot of our ancestors, we don't know much. There are some challenges when you get back to the 6th through the 8th generation. These can be difficult periods to find good information about ancestors. I'm sure the information is out there, we just haven't found it yet.

Let's look at what a generation is. A generation is sometimes defined as that time between the birth of a mother and the birth of her first offspring.  The literature says a generation is about 25 years and our family matches that for the last 4 generations. I'm using fathers rather than mothers for my example. My grandfathers were both born in 1893. My father was born in 1920. I was born in 1946. My oldest was born in 1970, and her oldest in 1994. There were 100 years and 9 months between the time my grandfather was born and the time my grandson was born.

As an example I traced forward to your great grandmother Eura Marion Johns (3 - this refers to the generation from me where I am (1)). Willen (12th generation from me) was born in 1580 in the Netherlands. His son, Aert Williamson (11)  was born in 1625, also in the Netherlands, but died in the Dutch colonies of New Amsterdam, what we now call New York City and New Jersey. William Aertse Williamson (10) was born in 1650 in New Amsterdam. You will find on the genealogical records it says New York City, but it was New Amsterdam. The Dutch settled the area prior to 1625 and it remained New Amsterdam until British frigates demanded the surrender of the city in 1664. Hence, records that say "New York City" have been modernized and cannot be verified as a NYC address prior to that time. I'm sure there is some geneaologist out there who can correct me.

My mother (2) and her mother (3)

Back to the ancestors. William Aertse Williamson's son Elbert Willemse Willemsen (10) (note the last name spelling change) was born in New Amsterdam in 1650. His son, Elbert Willemse Willemsen (9) was also born in New Amsterdam in 1688 (still using the New Amsterdam geographic location). William Elbertese Willemsen (8) was born in New York City in 1710, and his son John Williamson (7) was born in New Jersey in 1745. Jacob Williamson (6) was born in 1770 and his daughter Sarah (5), was born in 1815 and she married Jonah Johns and their son Lindsay Sutphin Johns (4) was born in 1845 in Pike County, Illinois. His only daughter, Eura Marion Johns (3), and my maternal grandmother, was born in Perry, Pike County, IL in 1893. Her daughter, my mother (2), was born in 1922, in Des Moines, Iowa. Geographically, that particular line of ancestors moved from the Netherlands to New Amsterdam (New York City and northern New Jersey) to the midwest between 1580 and 1922. Most of those ancestors lived what today we call the United States.

That is an awfully long introduction, but I think it helps us to better understand who we are. You can clearly classify yourselves as "Americans" because as we shall see in some future posts, we aren't just from the Netherlands, but also from England, Scotland, Normandy, Germany (Prussia to be specific), and other northern European locations. We came early and we came late (mid 1800s), but ancestrally we are here and have been here for a long time, so when someone asks where you are from the right answer is the United States. We've been here too long to suggest we have a different heritage than our American heritage. Our ancestors were here for the French and Indiana War, the American revolution, the Civil War, and all those since then. We may not have fought in all of them, but we were here. You have been in America for at least 11 generations dating back to 1635 and probably before.