Wednesday, March 24, 2010

May part 4







This is the last instalment of May's story. If anyone has anything to add to it, please feel free.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

May's story part 3






Along with this instalment of May's story, I would like to mention that it's Randy Townsend who I have to thank for collecting it. In fact, it's Randy who has done most of the work of digging into the family's past, both Nichols and Brummet. Hopefully, I have figured out how to enable him to be a co-author of this blog so he can contribute a lot more of his knowledge and make it available to all.

Monday, March 15, 2010

May's story part 2






Re: Wordsworm's comment in the first posting. Wordsworm is Steven Young, my younger son, who has some bitter feelings about not being accepted by my family because I was not married to his mother. A person can't help his feelings, and I am intimately familiar with those kinds of feelings, but I think it's very wrong to nurse a grievance. It doesn't hurt anyone more than yourself. We're all fallible, we all blunder through life as best we can, never knowing until it's too late what the consequences of our actions may be.
That's why it is good to know what challenges were faced by previous generations. A clean slate? Doesn't work. It isn't possible to learn everything you need to know to live a good life without heeding the lessons learned by our predecessors.
And that's what I like so much about this life story of Helen May Gervais. It's a humble story, but talk about courage in the face of adversity, I'm glad to say I come from the same stock that she did.
I hadn't thought of using this blog as a way of airing grievances, but every family has them, so maybe it's not a bad idea.
So without further ado, here is another instalment.

Saturday, March 13, 2010

Helen May (Williams) Gervais








I couldn't think of any brilliant title for this blog about my family history so I made it plain and simple. But obviously many more names come into it, for instance May Gervais. She was the daughter of Francis Mary Nichols, my Grandmother's sister. Until I saw this story I had never heard of her. I'm posting it here in instalments because it's so rare to have something like this and it shows how much things have changed in my lifetime. Life was very hard then. Besides, it's a good story.
I don't know a lot about the Nichols. George Nichols, my Grandmother Blanche's father was born in 1856 and lived in South Dakota. That's all I know, although I will repeat the story I have heard, that he was born on a wagon train going west. His mother died in childbirth, so he was left with the Indians as there were no nursing mothers with the group. I have no idea if it's true. He married Cecelia Rooney, the daughter of George Rooney who was born in Ireland in 1818. The trail goes cold there.
The Brummets are easier to trace, at least as far back as 1746, when James was born in the Piedmont of Virginia near present day Roanoke. Daniel Boone was traipsing the same woods about that time. A good account of what his life was like can be found here.
I've started this effort in the hope of getting as much info as possible in one place where it can be accessed by all family members. However, I hope I'm not the only one who wants to contribute. There are huge gaps in my knowledge and I'm not very good at disentangling all the relationships. If you want to add something, please avail yourself of the comments section. If you have a lot of information, I can enable you to make your own posts on this blog. I'm thinking of you, Randy.
I'll just leave things like this for now and hope it will become something people will find useful and interesting.