Years Haven’t Changed People Or Humor All That Much

Since Christmas Eve day is such a busy holiday and family day, it’s the perfect time for light-hearted genealogy stories to brighten your day.

Plus, they show that some things never change.

A Jan. 9, 1816, ad in the Portland, Maine Gazette read: “Whereas my wife, Mrs. Bridget, has again walked away with herself and left me with five small children and her blind mother and left nobody else to take care of house and home, and I hear has taken up with Tim Guigan, the lame fiddler, the same that was put in the stocks last Easter for stealing Barney Moodey’s game cock - This is to give notice that I will not pay for any support towards her and she had better never show the marks of her ten toes near by house again. P.S. Tim had better keep out of my sight, too.” (signed) Patrick McDallogh.

From a Kirby family history book comes the story of how George Kirby married Frances Potter in 1812.

During a terrible New England snowstorm, several families gathered at a Berkshire Hills farmhouse were forced to stay put until the storm abated.

After food and drink and playing amiable games, someone suggested a popular occupation of the day: performing a mock marriage.

After some discussion, they agreed to draw lots to see who should be the participants - and the lots fell to George Kirby and Fanny Potter, “both of whom entered into the spirit of the thing with a keen zest, notwithstanding they had never met before,” the family history reads.

The only thing lacking was someone who knew the marriage vows. Finally a “seedy individual” was found who could perform the ceremony only too well.

Before long, George and Fanny were pronounced man and wife amid the shouts and laughter of their companions. As the storm broke the next day and the travelers began to take their leave, imagine their surprise and indignation when it was learned that the “seedy individual” was a magistrate and the marriage was legal and binding!

George Kirby, who was engaged to marry his sister’s dear friend, found himself in a very awkward position - and Miss Potter equally so.

Consultations were held. Mr. Potter used all his influence to have the marriage set aside, but to no avail. Divorces were not granted without good cause in those days and marriage was not taken lightly under grim New England laws.

“So,” the family history goes, “they wisely made the best of a bad matter and were man and wife in earnest as they had been in fun.”

George, a shoemaker, died in 1864 and Fanny in 1872.

Here’s a story to champion the cause of queries:

While writing the history of his English village of Eye, the Rev. Randall decided to include thumbnail sketches of prominent persons over the centuries from the congregation of St. Matthew’s Church.

He was particularly fascinated by a tombstone inside the church with the initials “HWP.” Because of its prominent position, the vicar concluded it must be the grave of an extremely important local dignitary of years past.

He was so intrigued by the initials that he poured over parish records for nine long years hoping to find someone whose name fit: Henry Wimbourne Potter, or Herbert Wattle Pitstock, or even Happy Washwater O’Pudding. Anyone.

Nearly a decade of research yielded no one with the initials HWP.

Finally, he posted an appeal for information in the parish magazine. Two days later, a parishioner telephoned, saying his father had helped lay the stone chiseled with HWP: Hot Water Pipe.

The next story first appeared in a 1990 bulletin of the Chickasaw County, Iowa, Genealogical Society.

Mary Theis had written requesting information on the Henry and Mary Ann Evans Robinson family and about the grave of an infant, Madonna Hebrank.

Society officials answered they had just canvassed the cemetery and found no stone for little Madonna Hebrank.

Mary Theis replied there was nothing other than a little stone rabbit to mark Madonna’s grave.

Society members remembered the little stone rabbit and had wondered about it and wrote to Theis for more information.

They learned that Madonna Hebrank, daughter of Joseph and Susan Mary Robinson Hebrank, was born July 10, 1910, in Chickasaw County, Iowa, and was buried in New Hampton after she died of polio on Feb 14, 1911.

“Times were really hard in the county in 1911,” the bulletin article read. “Joseph Hebrank went to the local banker to see about borrowing enough money for his daughter’s burial, and the banker turned him down.”

Susan’s mother, Mary Ann Evans Robinson, said to bury her granddaughter at the boot of her purchased plot as “that little girl wouldn’t take up any space, nor hurt anyone.”

What’s ironic about the situation, is that the banker’s son also died of polio. Later, he begged forgiveness from Joseph Hebrank for not lending hm the money to bury his daughter.

When he had the money to do so years later, Grandpa Hebrank wanted to move Madonna to a grave of her own. But Great-grandma Robinson said, “No, leave that little girl in peace.”

So, that’s why Madonna lies at the foot of her grandmother’s grave, a little rabbit to mark the spot.

Genealogy society members took the child’s story to heart, and each spring, they paint the little rabbit white.

Here’s one of my favorite genealogy poems:

“I think that I shall never see the finish of my family tree

as it forever seems to grow from roots that started very low,

way back in ancient history times, in foreign lands and distant climes.

From them grew trunk and branching limb, that dated back to time so dim

one seldom knows exactly when the parents met and married then.

Though a verse like this is made by me, and the end’s in sight as you can see,

‘tis not the same with family trees that grow and grow through centuries.”

xxxx

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Donna Potter Phillips The Spokesman-Review