LIFE CAN BE FUN AND INTERESTING ~ If we only seek the truth and
not hide from it. Let me invite you to join me on a real
adventure through American history. Make you curious? How can
Bill Gray have links to American history? Come along for the ride
and I will show you.
Recently while searching my photo archives, I happened upon two Photo Comparisons done by the LDS Family Search Genealogical web site. Before I move on, let me highly recommend the LDS genealogical web site - for that we must give the Mormon church great credit. The LDS church has long placed great value on family and family history - so their worldwide database of family genealogy is second to none. And, it is FREE to use! You can find the site at: familysearch (dot) org
Moving on, about 35 years ago my brother, Bob, called me and started the conversation with, "I have something to tell you!" "Okay, what is it?" "No, I can't tell you!" "Bob, you have already opened the can of worms - so tell me what is so hard to tell."
Bob told me, "You are my half-brother. We have different fathers." He thought I would be upset, but I was excited by the possibilities. I don't think I bothered to ask him which father belonged to me.
"Wonderful, tell my more," I suggested. Bob was worried that I would be upset. He and our older cousin, Christine Byrd Hardin, had being talking about my story - but for many years she was afraid to tell me. When her mom, my Aunt Ola, and my mom were still alive, mom asked Aunt Ola if she should tell me - and Aunt Ola suggested she not.
I can understand Aunt Ola's thinking, for back in early 1937, when I surprised her, an unwed lady being pregnant was spoken of only in whispers. While mom was separated from Bob's dad and living with my Aunt Ola and Uncle Ed Byrd in Tuscumbia, Alabama - she met my biological father, Alonzo Arp.
Alonzo was a handsome young fellow who had come to the Shoals area of Alabama to work in construction - and since he and my Uncle Ed worked together, they became good friends. Naturally Alonzo would visit Uncle Ed's home where mom was living - and they began dating. In the latter part of 1936 when the job was finished, Alonzo went back to Ohio and they lost touch.
At that time, neither he nor my mom knew about the little surprise he left her, me. And in 1937 a young 20 year old woman having a child out of wedlock was not something anyone talked about. So my little secret lay dormant all those years until Bob and Christine opened the box and told me about it.
While they were afraid of hurting me - actually this news opened a whole new world for me. Somewhere out there I had another family - maybe other siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, and so many more new relatives that I had not known about before. It was like a whole new world opening to me, a new birth. Bob told me, "Christine knows the whole story. Call her."
You cannot imagine how fast I called Christine. "Hey, cousin, tell me about my father!" She told me about Alonzo spending time at Uncle Ed's home and of mom and Alonzo dating - and Christine sent me photos of Alonzo, mom, and Uncle Ed together. Mom being a 20-year old woman, separated from her legal husband, and with no means of support - without making a lot of noise over the situation she reunited with her estranged husband and I was born into the Gray family, which was a blessing to me. I had a wonderful childhood, loving and being loved by my Grandparents, Ed & Cora Gray, and I spent a lot of time on their farm.
I grew up believing Ed & Cora Gray were my biological grandparents, and I am not sure they even knew I was not - for I could not have had better grandparents. As a young boy I had cousins living at my grandparents farm - and his brother, my Great-Uncle Bob, had a farm close by where I had more cousins. Between my Grandfather Gray's farm and my Uncle Bob & Aunt Alice Gray's farm, I had lots of cousins. After her first husband died young, Aunt Alice, my mom's older sister, married my Great-Uncle Bob. So that made them both my Aunt and Uncle - and my Great-Aunt and Great-Uncle.
I know, kind of like the old song "I Am My Own Grandpa." For my younger Friends, that is a novelty song written by Dwight Latham, inspired when reading a book of Mark Twain anecdotes. In his book, Twain had written an anecdote to prove it would be possible for a man to become his own grandfather. The song was first performed by Lonzo and Oscar in 1947, and later by Willie Nelson. Notice the first to sing the song was named Lonzo - and my biological father Alonzo Arp was also called Lonzo. A wee bit of Twilight Zone coincidence, do you think?
Back to the farms, my cousin Buddy (Paul Jones), my brother Bob, and I were the Three Musketeers - having many adventures on the farm, swimming in a muddy end of Spring Creek off Woodmont Drive (Old U. S. Hwy 43) in Tuscumbia, riding grandpa's mules and palomino mare, Maudine. One evening we were all at Grandpa's farm celebrating someone's birthday when I jumped from a tree and broke my left arm. Bob's dad, Elvin, took me to a doctor - and thinking back, I really don't believe he knew he was not my father either.
Grandpa still used a team of mules for his farm work, and I remember the day that Bob, Buddy, and I rode with Grandpa up into what we called the mountains (more like big hills) south of Tuscumbia to cut and gather a wagon load of firewood. My grandparents had an older man living with them and helping on the farm. One day the three of us were running around in a freshly plowed field and we noticed the old man working in another field. I will not go into details, but we played a trick on the old man - and he caught on right away. Yes, we got into trouble - but Buddy more because he lived at the farm. As I said, we were the Three Musketeers, three young boys looking for mischief.
And quite honestly, I feel sure my grandparents never knew I was not their biological grandchild. If they did, they never treated me differently - I was one of the Gray kids, I belonged, and this was my family.
But now, thanks to the new revelation from Bob and Christine - I was also part of another family and that stirred my interest in genealogy. I began searching in the LDS FamilySearch site for both my Maternal Hall/Elam lineage and now my Earpe/Earp/Arp lineage. In my Maternal Hall Lineage I have only been able to go back 4 generations to my g-g-g-grandfather, Joseph Silas Hall, who was born circa 1800 - and all my years of searching for him, I have been hitting a brick wall.
Back that far, all my family ancestors were born in and lived in a small town in the very northwest corner of Alabama named Riverton. Riverton was a small agricultural community which in the 1934-1938 period much of it was flooded when the Congress-approved TVA Pickwick Landing Dam on the Tennessee River was constructed. My Hall family moved east to the town of Tuscumbia where I first said, "Hello, world!"
However, with tricks I learned in weaving my way into history with my Earpe/Earp/Arp lineage - I may now be able to break down that Hall/Elam wall and dig deeper into my Maternal family. As I said, exciting!
For many years I also kept hitting a brick wall in my Paternal Arp Lineage. In the 1990s the Internet started becoming a part of our daily lives - and began to open new avenues of exploration, especially with the advent of the Online LDS Genealogy web site. But I still was hitting a brick wall with my Arp Paternal Lineage. Maybe circa 1995/96 somehow I came upon a man, Brian Lord, who lived in Seattle, worked at a local FM radio station, and while he was not part of the Earpe/Earp/Arp family, he had a great knowledge of the their genealogy.
With the info that Brian Lord was able to give me, I learned that the Earp/Arp families mostly lived in the area which included northern Georgia and both South Carolina and North Carolina - and they had a family reunion every year. But because, at this time, I was only 90% sure this was my lineage I did not get too excited. Brian Lord introduced me to a man named James "Jim" Arp who lived in Murphy, North Carolina. Jim wrote me a letter telling me that he was pretty sure I have a half-sister, Imogene Donaldson, living near Seattle. And he gave me her address and phone number. Wow, now I was starting to believe this indeed was my Arp Lineage.
I called Imogene, but it was not a good time to chat since her husband was terminally ill. I introduced myself and told her I would call later. About six months later, I did call her and after that we talked fairly often on the phone. I sent her photos of me plus the photo of Alonzo Arp, my Uncle Ed Byrd, and mom taken when Alonzo and mom were dating - and she sent me photos of her dad, Alonzo, visiting her family in Washington.
She told me that when she received my photos, an aunt who lived nearby told her, "That is Alonzo's son, no doubt about it." I never had a chance to visit Imogene, even though we talked over the years - and she passed away about a year ago. But since she was a believer, we will have lots of time to catch up when I join her some day.
During the next couple of years of genealogy searching, a lady sent me an e-mail telling me, "Wyatt Earp and his brothers are your cousins." That was interesting, but I had no further facts to base it on - until later. Through the LDS Genealogy site I found that Joshua Earp (1706-1771) had two sons, Matthew (1736-1808) and William (1729-1778). Wyatt Earp and his brothers are in the lineage of William Earp - and I am in the lineage of Matthew Earp. They are my 6th cousins - Wyatt died in January 1937 and I was born July 1937. More Twilight Zone coincidence, do you think?
Not long ago, the LDS Family Search Genealogy web site sent me a notice that a girl, Mary Chilton, age 13, who arrived in America in 1620 on the Mayflower and whose father, James Chilton, was one of the 41 men who signed the Mayflower Compact, was my 10th Great-Grandmother. The Pilgrims had come to America in search of religious freedom, but before leaving the boat at Plymouth, Massachusetts, they needed a mutually agreed upon governing document for their new Plymouth Colony.
That document was the Mayflower Compact. It was written by the men aboard the Mayflower. Mary Chilton's father, James Chilton, was one of the 41 men who wrote and signed the Mayflower Compact. It is my firm belief that the three most important documents in our American history are: The Mayflower Compact, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution. Together they form a documented chain declaring our American freedom. And now, I may have a direct link to that history, wow!
I have always loved America. But after seeing this and learning there is a possibility that my 10th generation Great-Grandmother, Mary Chilton, actually came to America on the Mayflower, and that her father, my 11th generation Great-Grandfather - was part of the creation of what I consider to be the first of the three most important documents in American history - it was like, "WOW, now I really feel like an American all the way to my bones!"
But just as I would not lay claim to my Earp/Arp lineage or that Wyatt Earp was my cousin - until I could connect all the dots - I cannot lay claim to Mary Chilton until I can do the same.
Starting back from me, I have connected many dots from my Paternal Grandmother, Alafair Fain, Alonzo's mother, through my 5th Great-Grandmother, Sarah Boone - to her father Squire Boone Sr., my 6th Great-Grandfather - to George Boone 1, my 9th Great-Grandfather. And there I lose the trail with him and his wife, Mary Boone. But that takes me back to the 1620 time period. And if you recall, the Mayflower landed at Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1620. Why can't I connect the dots?
Mary Chilton had 11 children - and most of her children had 10 or more children. Do you see how the paths to the right dots can get very confusing? At every link, the number gets multiplied by 10. So Mary's 11 becomes over 100, which becomes about 1000, etc. And all I had to do was to find the ONE direct link to my dot. Yes, a very big and time consuming task. Makes me wish they had TV in those days to entertain themselves.
By the way, does that name Boone sound familiar? Yes, my 5th Great-Grandmother, Sarah, is the sister of Daniel Boone, making him my 5th Great-Granduncle. You are right, he is the famous frontiersman, hunter, explorer,etc., that we all read about in grade school and about whom movies have been made. I wasn't looking for this - it just popped up as I wound my way through the generations, searching for Mary Chilton.
As you can see, I have gone past the 5th generation on my paternal ancestors - but that is where the dots begin to get fuzzy - trying to connect them to the other end and my alleged 10th generation Great-Grandmother, Mary Chilton. From her end, I have had some success in getting her lineage up from the 1620 time period - but cannot connect the right dots.
Why? Well, on her end of the lineage line - all the families had 10 -15 children. And to get the dots to connect I have to go through all of her 11 children - then through each of their 10 - 15 children, etc. Do you see the difficulty? Each new generation has over a hundred paths, and the next maybe a thousand paths, etc. - before I can connect that one line's dot with my line's dot. Almost time for the funny farm!
The best connections of the dots I can find are through marriage. Mary Chilton Winslow and her husband, John Winslow had 11 children. Several of their children married spouses which are in my direct Earpe/Earp/Arp lineage. So I suppose Mary Chilton is only my relative by marriage. Hey, that is better than no connection to such historical figures.
Do you see now why I was excited when I learned that had another family? And what a thrill ride it has been traveling through all the generations in my attempt to connect the dots and know that I DO have a connection with history? Not the final results I wanted, but I am a happy camper!
God bless, have a wonderful, blessed day,
Bill
Recently while searching my photo archives, I happened upon two Photo Comparisons done by the LDS Family Search Genealogical web site. Before I move on, let me highly recommend the LDS genealogical web site - for that we must give the Mormon church great credit. The LDS church has long placed great value on family and family history - so their worldwide database of family genealogy is second to none. And, it is FREE to use! You can find the site at: familysearch (dot) org
Moving on, about 35 years ago my brother, Bob, called me and started the conversation with, "I have something to tell you!" "Okay, what is it?" "No, I can't tell you!" "Bob, you have already opened the can of worms - so tell me what is so hard to tell."
Bob told me, "You are my half-brother. We have different fathers." He thought I would be upset, but I was excited by the possibilities. I don't think I bothered to ask him which father belonged to me.
"Wonderful, tell my more," I suggested. Bob was worried that I would be upset. He and our older cousin, Christine Byrd Hardin, had being talking about my story - but for many years she was afraid to tell me. When her mom, my Aunt Ola, and my mom were still alive, mom asked Aunt Ola if she should tell me - and Aunt Ola suggested she not.
I can understand Aunt Ola's thinking, for back in early 1937, when I surprised her, an unwed lady being pregnant was spoken of only in whispers. While mom was separated from Bob's dad and living with my Aunt Ola and Uncle Ed Byrd in Tuscumbia, Alabama - she met my biological father, Alonzo Arp.
Alonzo was a handsome young fellow who had come to the Shoals area of Alabama to work in construction - and since he and my Uncle Ed worked together, they became good friends. Naturally Alonzo would visit Uncle Ed's home where mom was living - and they began dating. In the latter part of 1936 when the job was finished, Alonzo went back to Ohio and they lost touch.
At that time, neither he nor my mom knew about the little surprise he left her, me. And in 1937 a young 20 year old woman having a child out of wedlock was not something anyone talked about. So my little secret lay dormant all those years until Bob and Christine opened the box and told me about it.
While they were afraid of hurting me - actually this news opened a whole new world for me. Somewhere out there I had another family - maybe other siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, and so many more new relatives that I had not known about before. It was like a whole new world opening to me, a new birth. Bob told me, "Christine knows the whole story. Call her."
You cannot imagine how fast I called Christine. "Hey, cousin, tell me about my father!" She told me about Alonzo spending time at Uncle Ed's home and of mom and Alonzo dating - and Christine sent me photos of Alonzo, mom, and Uncle Ed together. Mom being a 20-year old woman, separated from her legal husband, and with no means of support - without making a lot of noise over the situation she reunited with her estranged husband and I was born into the Gray family, which was a blessing to me. I had a wonderful childhood, loving and being loved by my Grandparents, Ed & Cora Gray, and I spent a lot of time on their farm.
I grew up believing Ed & Cora Gray were my biological grandparents, and I am not sure they even knew I was not - for I could not have had better grandparents. As a young boy I had cousins living at my grandparents farm - and his brother, my Great-Uncle Bob, had a farm close by where I had more cousins. Between my Grandfather Gray's farm and my Uncle Bob & Aunt Alice Gray's farm, I had lots of cousins. After her first husband died young, Aunt Alice, my mom's older sister, married my Great-Uncle Bob. So that made them both my Aunt and Uncle - and my Great-Aunt and Great-Uncle.
I know, kind of like the old song "I Am My Own Grandpa." For my younger Friends, that is a novelty song written by Dwight Latham, inspired when reading a book of Mark Twain anecdotes. In his book, Twain had written an anecdote to prove it would be possible for a man to become his own grandfather. The song was first performed by Lonzo and Oscar in 1947, and later by Willie Nelson. Notice the first to sing the song was named Lonzo - and my biological father Alonzo Arp was also called Lonzo. A wee bit of Twilight Zone coincidence, do you think?
Back to the farms, my cousin Buddy (Paul Jones), my brother Bob, and I were the Three Musketeers - having many adventures on the farm, swimming in a muddy end of Spring Creek off Woodmont Drive (Old U. S. Hwy 43) in Tuscumbia, riding grandpa's mules and palomino mare, Maudine. One evening we were all at Grandpa's farm celebrating someone's birthday when I jumped from a tree and broke my left arm. Bob's dad, Elvin, took me to a doctor - and thinking back, I really don't believe he knew he was not my father either.
Grandpa still used a team of mules for his farm work, and I remember the day that Bob, Buddy, and I rode with Grandpa up into what we called the mountains (more like big hills) south of Tuscumbia to cut and gather a wagon load of firewood. My grandparents had an older man living with them and helping on the farm. One day the three of us were running around in a freshly plowed field and we noticed the old man working in another field. I will not go into details, but we played a trick on the old man - and he caught on right away. Yes, we got into trouble - but Buddy more because he lived at the farm. As I said, we were the Three Musketeers, three young boys looking for mischief.
And quite honestly, I feel sure my grandparents never knew I was not their biological grandchild. If they did, they never treated me differently - I was one of the Gray kids, I belonged, and this was my family.
But now, thanks to the new revelation from Bob and Christine - I was also part of another family and that stirred my interest in genealogy. I began searching in the LDS FamilySearch site for both my Maternal Hall/Elam lineage and now my Earpe/Earp/Arp lineage. In my Maternal Hall Lineage I have only been able to go back 4 generations to my g-g-g-grandfather, Joseph Silas Hall, who was born circa 1800 - and all my years of searching for him, I have been hitting a brick wall.
Back that far, all my family ancestors were born in and lived in a small town in the very northwest corner of Alabama named Riverton. Riverton was a small agricultural community which in the 1934-1938 period much of it was flooded when the Congress-approved TVA Pickwick Landing Dam on the Tennessee River was constructed. My Hall family moved east to the town of Tuscumbia where I first said, "Hello, world!"
However, with tricks I learned in weaving my way into history with my Earpe/Earp/Arp lineage - I may now be able to break down that Hall/Elam wall and dig deeper into my Maternal family. As I said, exciting!
For many years I also kept hitting a brick wall in my Paternal Arp Lineage. In the 1990s the Internet started becoming a part of our daily lives - and began to open new avenues of exploration, especially with the advent of the Online LDS Genealogy web site. But I still was hitting a brick wall with my Arp Paternal Lineage. Maybe circa 1995/96 somehow I came upon a man, Brian Lord, who lived in Seattle, worked at a local FM radio station, and while he was not part of the Earpe/Earp/Arp family, he had a great knowledge of the their genealogy.
With the info that Brian Lord was able to give me, I learned that the Earp/Arp families mostly lived in the area which included northern Georgia and both South Carolina and North Carolina - and they had a family reunion every year. But because, at this time, I was only 90% sure this was my lineage I did not get too excited. Brian Lord introduced me to a man named James "Jim" Arp who lived in Murphy, North Carolina. Jim wrote me a letter telling me that he was pretty sure I have a half-sister, Imogene Donaldson, living near Seattle. And he gave me her address and phone number. Wow, now I was starting to believe this indeed was my Arp Lineage.
I called Imogene, but it was not a good time to chat since her husband was terminally ill. I introduced myself and told her I would call later. About six months later, I did call her and after that we talked fairly often on the phone. I sent her photos of me plus the photo of Alonzo Arp, my Uncle Ed Byrd, and mom taken when Alonzo and mom were dating - and she sent me photos of her dad, Alonzo, visiting her family in Washington.
She told me that when she received my photos, an aunt who lived nearby told her, "That is Alonzo's son, no doubt about it." I never had a chance to visit Imogene, even though we talked over the years - and she passed away about a year ago. But since she was a believer, we will have lots of time to catch up when I join her some day.
During the next couple of years of genealogy searching, a lady sent me an e-mail telling me, "Wyatt Earp and his brothers are your cousins." That was interesting, but I had no further facts to base it on - until later. Through the LDS Genealogy site I found that Joshua Earp (1706-1771) had two sons, Matthew (1736-1808) and William (1729-1778). Wyatt Earp and his brothers are in the lineage of William Earp - and I am in the lineage of Matthew Earp. They are my 6th cousins - Wyatt died in January 1937 and I was born July 1937. More Twilight Zone coincidence, do you think?
Not long ago, the LDS Family Search Genealogy web site sent me a notice that a girl, Mary Chilton, age 13, who arrived in America in 1620 on the Mayflower and whose father, James Chilton, was one of the 41 men who signed the Mayflower Compact, was my 10th Great-Grandmother. The Pilgrims had come to America in search of religious freedom, but before leaving the boat at Plymouth, Massachusetts, they needed a mutually agreed upon governing document for their new Plymouth Colony.
That document was the Mayflower Compact. It was written by the men aboard the Mayflower. Mary Chilton's father, James Chilton, was one of the 41 men who wrote and signed the Mayflower Compact. It is my firm belief that the three most important documents in our American history are: The Mayflower Compact, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution. Together they form a documented chain declaring our American freedom. And now, I may have a direct link to that history, wow!
I have always loved America. But after seeing this and learning there is a possibility that my 10th generation Great-Grandmother, Mary Chilton, actually came to America on the Mayflower, and that her father, my 11th generation Great-Grandfather - was part of the creation of what I consider to be the first of the three most important documents in American history - it was like, "WOW, now I really feel like an American all the way to my bones!"
But just as I would not lay claim to my Earp/Arp lineage or that Wyatt Earp was my cousin - until I could connect all the dots - I cannot lay claim to Mary Chilton until I can do the same.
Starting back from me, I have connected many dots from my Paternal Grandmother, Alafair Fain, Alonzo's mother, through my 5th Great-Grandmother, Sarah Boone - to her father Squire Boone Sr., my 6th Great-Grandfather - to George Boone 1, my 9th Great-Grandfather. And there I lose the trail with him and his wife, Mary Boone. But that takes me back to the 1620 time period. And if you recall, the Mayflower landed at Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1620. Why can't I connect the dots?
Mary Chilton had 11 children - and most of her children had 10 or more children. Do you see how the paths to the right dots can get very confusing? At every link, the number gets multiplied by 10. So Mary's 11 becomes over 100, which becomes about 1000, etc. And all I had to do was to find the ONE direct link to my dot. Yes, a very big and time consuming task. Makes me wish they had TV in those days to entertain themselves.
By the way, does that name Boone sound familiar? Yes, my 5th Great-Grandmother, Sarah, is the sister of Daniel Boone, making him my 5th Great-Granduncle. You are right, he is the famous frontiersman, hunter, explorer,etc., that we all read about in grade school and about whom movies have been made. I wasn't looking for this - it just popped up as I wound my way through the generations, searching for Mary Chilton.
As you can see, I have gone past the 5th generation on my paternal ancestors - but that is where the dots begin to get fuzzy - trying to connect them to the other end and my alleged 10th generation Great-Grandmother, Mary Chilton. From her end, I have had some success in getting her lineage up from the 1620 time period - but cannot connect the right dots.
Why? Well, on her end of the lineage line - all the families had 10 -15 children. And to get the dots to connect I have to go through all of her 11 children - then through each of their 10 - 15 children, etc. Do you see the difficulty? Each new generation has over a hundred paths, and the next maybe a thousand paths, etc. - before I can connect that one line's dot with my line's dot. Almost time for the funny farm!
The best connections of the dots I can find are through marriage. Mary Chilton Winslow and her husband, John Winslow had 11 children. Several of their children married spouses which are in my direct Earpe/Earp/Arp lineage. So I suppose Mary Chilton is only my relative by marriage. Hey, that is better than no connection to such historical figures.
Do you see now why I was excited when I learned that had another family? And what a thrill ride it has been traveling through all the generations in my attempt to connect the dots and know that I DO have a connection with history? Not the final results I wanted, but I am a happy camper!
God bless, have a wonderful, blessed day,
Bill
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