Cousin Diana

 Greetings!

I haven't written in this blog for seven years, having stopped most research into my family history in 2014 after 20 years of research.  Yesterday, at a Thanksgiving dinner at our house, the conversation on travels mentioned that one of my early ambitions for English and French trips was to research family history.  When the topic of visiting English royal castles came up, I mentioned being related to Princess Diana.

Here's the connection.

On August 13, 1633, two early Massachusetts immigrants (Adam Hawkes and Ann Hutchinson) had twins.  Susannah and John ended up the tenth great-grandparents of Diana and I.  John's descendants stayed in New England, and their children became Presidents, Supreme Court Justices, and writers.  Susannah's were similarly influential, and one of them married into the English Spencer family.  A granddaughter was Diana.

Wednesday, December 31st, New Year's Eve for Bonzo

Greetings!

Since we arrived home from Antartica last week (see http://gfpktravels.blogspot.com), I've been contacted by a couple of cousins looking into English Fearon history.  Completing that today, I decided to take another look at my grandmother (the name I gave her as a child was "Bonzo") Marie Eleanor Gagne's history.

In one of the last times when I grilled her for memories of the past, she mentioned the name Letourneau.  As her side of the family is mostly French, I have been looking for a connection to that name for years.  Her father's family resided for almost three centuries in the Quebec area, having been among the founders.  Her mother's family disappeared beyond her mother in Penobscot, Maine. Finding the right relatives named "King" (Stephen?) in New England is not easy.  Bonzo always believed that the name "King" was the english version of "Le Roi du Plessis", which she believed would be found somewhere back into her mother's father's side of the family.

And then, I took another look at the second page of her mother's marriage certificate.  The one which contained information not included in the cover summary.  It had the last name of Bonzo's mother's mother - Mary Latno. What a strange name?   Searching in detail for Latno's in and around Penobscot, I found that the Letourneau family from Quebec area had found their way to the town, and Mary's father had changed the spelling of the name.  Bonzo's father's father also had a name change from Gagne to Gonyar, reportedly by an official not familiar with French.

A long lineage now exists on my family's tree for Bonzo's mother's french Canadian history, and even longer go on the southwestern coast of France.  Shortly after her father's side of the family came at Cardinal Richelieu request to establish New France in Quebec, her mother's side of the family followed.  The middle of the 1600's were exciting for our French family adventurers, and the next 300 years found them pioneering French Canada.

And thanks, Bonzo, for your belief that you were truly French.  You have every right to claim it, and to have been proud of your ancestors!

Google + for Collaborative Research

Greetings!

I'm on Google + now, and encourage my cousins with a computer with a camera and microphone (anything bought in the last year or two), and a gmail email account (free), to add a Google Plus account (free) and search for me (Gregory Fearon).  Add me to a circle (Genealogy Cousins), and I'll be notified.  Or just send me an email that you've joined.  I'll find and put you in one of my circles.

I'm planning on using Google Plus's Hangouts (audio/video conferencing - free) to help us work on our family history together.  We can look at our online family trees together, share documents, and enlist the world to help us get past our research walls.

It's fun.  Come and see.

Gregory

Ideas too early

Greetings!

I was glad that I kept the first genealogy printouts, and emails from 15 years ago.  I was just beginning to explore my ancestry, and information was appearing on early family tree websites.  I sent out an email with what I had found on Fearon births, deaths and marriages in England and Ireland.  In addition, we had taken a trip to Ireland, and I found additional information in the country's record archives in Dublin.

Digging out the paperwork today, I discovered that fifteen years ago a long forgotten email colleague and possible relative was pursuing the same ancestral question at the center of my recent research in Great Britain.  What caused the Fearon's in the world to originate in both Armagh County, Ireland, and Cumbria, England at about the same time?

Ross Fearon, now deceased, never found an answer which satisfied his curiosity.  His emails indicate that he had not found a common ancestor, and had a variety of evidence of separate origins.  But he wondered if their proximity (across the Irish Sea) had meant there was some social and familial crossover during the 17th - 19th centuries.

Seeing the same ancestral residential patterns over 200 years, I decided I needed to know more about the historical events in the two areas during the period.  I needed to know what caused movement between them, and if that might help me understand the relationships.  I've dug out the books that I've collected on Irish history (and promised myself I would read), and now I'll keep the promise.

I also needed to see if I could re-connect with any of my earlier correspondents to learn what they might have found.  I constructed a Google Map with placemarks for each of those Fearons who responded to my emails in 1997.  The Map allows me to re-invite them into a Fearon Family Community, and encourages them to add comments and links to information to the map for others to read and respond to.

I don't think you ever outgrow your wonder about your ancestors.  We'll find out who wants to strt up a new set of research using the latest internet tools.

Gregory Fearon
gfearon@sonic.net

Taking the Fearon family another 30 years back in time.

Greetings!

Our recent trip to Great Britain gave me the opportunity to familiarize myself with the Ennerdale Valley, earliest home I knew about for my great grandfather, John Fearon.  Just before the trip. I had found my grandfather, William Walker Fearon, living in Ennerdale Bridge in the 1891 and 1901 English Census.  On the trip, I was able to locate the approximate location of the family farm house.  I also obtained clues that my great grandfather and great great grandfather probably lived in the same area.

But it took until I got home to learn more about the family's earlier years and generations.

I've told the story before of the Fearon family's deficit fathers.  Both my father and his father could have stayed around a bit longer as parents.  And my father and I both suffered because of it.  At least my grandfather seems to have had the benefit of living with his parents from 1890 until his departure from England for America with his older sister, Margaret, at 16 years of age.  My great grandfather didn't fare as well.

John Fearon, born in 1860, lost his mother at age 1, and his father at age 3, and his grandfather at age 9.  His sister, Eleanor, and he were split up and taken in by two local families.  John and Isabel Bowman agreed in 1863 to raise my great grandfather, at the farm (Mireside) where his father (William) had worked all his life.   The farm was located nearby the home of my great great grandparents, John and Eleanor Fearon, who lived at Hollymes, Ennerdale Valley.


  

   

Why I believe that Henry Linton is my 3rd great grandfather

Greetings!

The key is whether my grandfather, William Walker Fearon, is the same man as Marjorie Gardner's great great grandmother's brother's (George Linton) daughter's (Mary Louisa Linton) son - William Fearon.

Both were born in 1889.

My grandfather reported on his selective service application in 1917 that he was born in Belfast, Ireland, to John Fearon and Mary Fearon.  I don't believe that's true, unless he was born while his parents were traveling in that area.

His middle name is Walker, the family name of his grandmother.

He named his oldest daughter, Beatrice.  William Walker's sister was named Beatrice Ellen Fearon.

His second oldest daughter (my aunt Eloise), provided me in 1995 with the married names and addresses of three of his sisters, to whom she had corresponded for years:

Mrs. R. Anderson, 21 Napier Street, Auckland, New Zealand.  English marriage records indicate that Rebecca Fearon married Robert Anderson in the 1st quarter of 1921 in Tynemouth, Northumberland.
Mrs. J. D. Williamson, 35 Wetheriggs Drive, Penrith, Cumberland, England.  English marriage records indicate that Edith Fearon married James D. Williamson in the 3rd quarter of 1928 in Whitehaven, Cumberland.
Marian Stronach, 1761 Great North Road, Auckland, New Zealand.  New Zealand's WWII Selective service rolls indicate that the butcher, Gordon William Stronach, lived at that address in April and June of 1943.

If I'm right, and my grandfather is the same William Walker that appears in Marjorie Gardener's family tree, then we share the same 3rd great grandfather, Henry Linton.

Gregory Fearon

Traveling through family history

Greetings!

Our travel to England and New England this month have had family heritage at its core.  After discovering a few months ago that my grandfather on my father’s side was born in England, and not Ireland as he told everyone, I’ve been using the trip to get a better sense of what that family history looks like.  In addition, I’ve been pursuing a long delayed dream to visit the pathway along which my Lary family made their way over a thousand years from France to England to America.


As a descendant of European royalty from the French Franks to the English Plantagenets, visiting Britain’s castles and churches has been an demonstration of family enterprise.  The country’s towns and cities were built by, and the characters and stories are about, the trunk of our family tree.  But following the lineage geographically isn't as simple as visiting Buckingham Palace.  First, our family route to William and Harry leads through both Diana and Charles.
The easiest and longest route starts where all modern monarchies begin, with Charles Pepin in France,  Father of Charlemagne, and an ancestor of William I the Conqueror.  When William I invaded England in 1066, his victory at Hastings carried at least 300 years of throne time to English soil.  Though our direct line from the throne ended when Henry III died in 1274, and his first son (Edward I) succeeded him (we're descended from his younger son, Edmund), the family line of our cousins continues to the present-day Elizabeth, Charles, and William and Harry.

Henry III tried to appoint Edmund to King of Sicily, and found the present King unwilling to give up the local throne.  So Edmund settled for being the first Duke of both Lancaster and Leicester.  The castle he took over, remodeled, and in which our family lived for 50 years is Grosmont Castle.    Edmund's grand-daughter, Eleanor, married into the Beaumont family (Viscounts of Maine, France) in 1250.  Her husband's grandfather had been the King of Jerusalem, Emperor of Constantinople, before his father emigrated to Aberdeen, Scotland and Lincolnshire, England in the early 1300s, where they stayed for almost 100 years.  
In 1480, a Beaumont granddaughter (Frideswide Lovel) married Sir Edward Norreys, head of a long line of Berkeshire Norreys.  Her great great granddaughter, Mary Norris, married Isaac Allerton, the 5th signer of the "Mayflower Compact". Mary and Isaac were among the Pilgrims to flee England to Leiden, Holland for religious reasons. They married there in 1611 and she was given the unoffical title of "Maid of Newberry" while living in Holland. In 1622, Mary and Isaac embarked on the Mayflower with 102 passengers, including three pregnant women. Mary was one of them. About a month after they arrived at Plymouth in the "New World", she gave birth to the first child born in the colonies, a stillborn child. She was still aboard ship in Cape Cod Harbor while houses were being built. Mary died about a month later.  She traveled to the Colonies with her husband and three children Barhlomew, Remember and Mary Allerton Cushman, who became the wife of Elder Thomas Cushman.  It is said that in the painting by Henry Sargent (1770-1885) entitled "Landing of the Pilgrims", Mary Norris Allerton is represented as having a fine face, rather beautiful, and as being of a "meek and quiet spirit". The painting was painted in 1818-1822 and is on permanent display at Pilgrim Hall Museum; Plymouth, Massachusetts. at the Cole Hill Monument.  It is reputed to be the scene of the secret night burials of those who died during the settlement's first bitter winter. Corn was planted over their unmarked graves so that the Native Americans should not know how many had perished.Mary Norris Allerton is the 2nd inscription on the monument.

Next week, we'll travel to New England, and resume the journey following my ancestors. They'll include the Cushmans, Hawkes, Coggswells, and Anthoines, before finding the Watsons and the Larys.  From English aristocracy to religious rebels to shipworkers to blacksmiths to farmers to mill workers to train and automobile mechanics to nurses and scientists to young professionals.

Gregory