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Gussie:
They were posted somewhere on this forum several years ago, but when I search, I turn up too many forums to look through. Here they are again:
Mary Lovina Potter Ralston was my gggrandmother. Her ancestors came from PA, WV, and VA. Her husband, James Alexander Ralston (son of my Blackfoot ID) had ancestors from near Pittsburgh, PA. The third one is Andrew Jackson Sinkey, uncle to Mary Lovina Potter.
Techteach
Hey Tech thanx for these great pic’s., although we have seen them several years ago! The third one looks so much like Nikona!
I have seen many times in our shared research where your family and mine and several others follow such similar paths if not exactly the very same pathways.
My family has been in Iowa and Wi. since the early 1830’s for sure, some of the Wi. people moved there in the early 1870’s and there are still family stories of that migration in the family!
As you may have noticed my family and I have asked that our family photo’s were to be removed out of public access, we felt asthough these are our private images to be shared with those that we trust and feel comfortable with.
I never bring out old (or new) family pic’s to share with those that I just meet, so once again thank you for re-posting those family images, as great as they are, they are still your private property.
Thanx again for being so generous.
Yes, I always thought he looked like Nikona too.
The story in the family from Andrew’s brother to his granddaughter is that they were Irish and Indian. We found the Irish in the male DNA tests on Deb’s father. Andrew has this eye that is small that runs in the family. I have it, Deb has it, my sister had to have a facelift to even see. I said this before that the plastic surgeon told her that there must be Asian or NA in the family to have eyes like she had.
Andrew also looks a great deal like the Lakota elder whose home I helped paint. One of my Lakota friends said that he saw the NA ancestry in me and was glad I was trying to learn something of the culture since my family hid it.
Techteach
Hi PappyDick,
Thank you for the information on Gunlog Fur. She is a highly respected scholar with excellent credentials. On May 3, 2002, she gave a public lecture at New Mexico State University. The title of her presentation was, “Some Women are Wiser than Some Men: Gender and Native American Studies.”
Historically, a number of NA cultures were matriarchal. Currently, many NA leaders are women. A noted example is Elouise Pepion Cobell, the great-granddaughter of Mountain Chief, a prominent warrior leader of the Blackfeet Nation. In 1996, Cobell filed a class-action lawsuit against the Department of the Interior, seeking monetary reparations for 500,000 NAs from 100 tribes in Montana, New Mexico, Arizona, Oklahoma, and South Dakota. It is one of the largest such suits in U.S. history.
The suit alleges mismanagement or outright theft by the Bureau of Indian Affairs of revenues generated by timber, oil, mining and grazing companies operating on tribal lands, such that very little of these monies actually went to the tribes. This lawsuit is continuing today.
Bev:
Not sure if this is a connection or not, but I was scanning in the chapters on my Rev. War William Potter and William Sinkey to send to cousins and found a chapter on an Achilles Rogers who is buried in Pennington Cemetery near Keokuk. It says he was born in Albemarle County, VA around 1761. He maried an Eliza. They lived in Indiana until the late 1840s when they came to IA to live with their daughter.
Techteach
techteach,
Thank you for posting your family pictures for us newer ones. Such a fine and noble looking family!
I think your GGGrandfather Ralston looks as much if not more like Chief John Tutela. He looks very powerful. Do you have any idea as to his stature? I’m wondering if he was tall like the Tutela were described. The men in my family German/Irish/Blackfoot/Cherokee had very broad shoulders and muscular build but were shorter.
His height might be mentioned in the memoir of my great aunt. I don’t have time to check right now. I can tell you that his father was like 300 pounds. My family that resembles that side tend toward the tall side. I am 5’8″. He was not a nice guy. He did not treat my gggrandmother well. Once, his sons watched a traveling show where the announcer was wearing a hat with a rattlesnake skin. They went home and told their father how much they admired it and wanted one. He forbid them to try to kill a rattlesnake. They lived on the banks of the Maquoketa River where there are limestone bluffs that attract snakes, so they killed one anyway, despite their father. The consequences were harsh.
His wife had “grey eyes and blue-black hair that she never cut. She wore it in braids wrapped around her head.”
Techteach
techteach,
Domestic violence must be but one of the manifestations of the darker aspects of our genealogical histories. One major contributing factor would probably be alcohol…let alone what the culture of war in this land could contribute, and I imagine, the remnants of slavery’s darkness.
In my pursuit of genealogy I have discovered many “Skeleton’s in the Closet”. In working on dealing with them I’ve decided all that can be done is to actively work to alleviate the present day remnants of the activities participated in by our ancestors. Such as workers rights and a right to higher education to counter-act conditions much too close to slavery that entrap too many people in America today.
I was shocked to find slave owners in my lines. That paled when in my mother’s line, though I’ve drug my feet in researching the final truth, there appears to be a slave trader, probably married to an Indian woman. I need to look into it…maybe he was an Indian slave trader and maybe there is information in his letters.
These things sicken me and I’ve endured much private suffering over them. It makes me understand why my parents discouraged talk of the past and ancestors. I’d thought it might have been an issue between my Mother’s English and my Father’s German. They always responded to my inquiries with:
“Our people have been here too long to keep track of that sort of thing. That doesn’t matter. We are all Americans! We are all equal…we just do things differently.”
Well, regardless of any downfalls or short comings of our ancestors, your family’s portraits still show great strength of character in their faces.
Hello Wachinka,
I don’t mean to be nosey, but why do you feel bad for what your ancestors did? You weren’t there, you weren’t party to their life choices, so why do you feel responsible?
White people weren’t the only race that had slaves. In fact, the Africans themselves caught the black people and sold them to the white slavers. And, even as I write this post, it’s a little known fact that right now in Sudan there are literally millions of black slaves who have been captured by other black slave owners or slavers and then sold on the slave block. Right now in ‘enlightened’ time. It’s almost mind boggling that this is happening in this day and age. Entire families and villiages have been totally distroyed and killed and captured and the people marched off and used as slaves. Some Christians are redeeming them by buying them from the slave owners and setting them free and helping them.
And right here in our own country the Indians themselves had slaves from other tribes. And on the other side, many Indians were captured and sold as slaves to the whites. And I was reading the other day that some Indians helped the white people capture Indians from other rival tribes to sell for slaves.
On my father’s side I have both plantation owners and endentured servants in my line and I do not feel the least bit responsible for the decisions my ancestors made. I, for one, am not buying into the blame for what my ancestors did. They have to answer to God for their actions and I’ll answer to Him for my actions.
Personally, I do not believe in keeping people captive in any way. And really when you think of it, owning your ancestors ‘sins’ is being held captive to the past and having the ‘sins of the fathers visited onto the sons and daughters’ for many generations.
I do agree with you that we should do everything possible to keep this from ever happening in our country again. Slavery is ugly, vile and wrong. But I refuse to wear my plantation owner ancestor’s shoes or be shackled to the past and therefore become a slave to it, living in humiliation because of some distant ancestor’s actions. And I refuse to hate all white people because my Indian ancestor was an indentured servant. Actually, in the end, she wound up marrying the guy..which could have been a worse slavery in the end. (just kidding — I think) LOL
Ok ok.. that’s all I have to say about that at this time. 🙂
Hi Techteach,
Thanks for the information on Achilles Rogers. I just love his first name Achilles! I don’t know if he is related, but there are very few Rogers buried in the Fort Madison/Keokuk area, so thank you for this important lead. There is an old cemetery in Montrose, Iowa, which was exclusively for the mixed bloods. Today, it exists only as an open field, because all of the original grave markers were made of wood. Not one has survived the passage of time. Montrose is located near the Mississippi River, between Keokuk and Fort Madison.
If you want to visit a site steeped in Indian history, the isolated village of La Pointe, on Madeline Island, in northern Wisconsin, is the perfect destination. We spent three days there two years ago, in a cabin on the shores of Lake Superior. We took a car ferry from the mainland to the island with our three dogs. There are many old cemeteries on Madeline Island, reflecting the intermarriage of the Native Americans, the French, and the English. Many of these cemeteries have been well preserved.
There is a cemetery in Person County, North Carolina, named the Rogers-Stephens Cemetery. Two of the oldest graves are those of Geo. C. Rogers, born 1785 and died 1865, and his wife Mary H. Rogers, born 1797 and died 1876.
There are also several Stephens, including a small child Lillie F., daughter of T. J. and M. F. Stephens, born in 1867 and died in 1871.
Although my ancestors were not originally from North Carolina, this cemetery is interesting to me because of the historical connection between the Rogers and Stephens families in North Carolina. The link is http://www.rootsweb.com/~ncperson/rogers-stephens_cemetery.htm
Despite many months of diligent and apparently futile research, I have failed to find an obituary for Martha Stephens Rogers, who died in 1893 or 1894. I found the obituary of her husband, Dean Rogers, who died in 1877. I have also found the obituary of their daughter, Hester Rogers Fitzgerald, who died in 1878.
I published Dean Rogers’ obituary in an earlier post. In comparing the obituaries of Dean and Hester, who died within one year of each other, I made a startling observation. Dean’s obituary was quite long and detailed in comparison to Hester’s obituary. In fact, Dean’s obituary was 368 words long, while Hester’s was only 38 words long!
In trying to determine the reason for this discrepancy, I discovered the following link:
http://www.deathreference.com/En-Gh/Gender-Discrimination-after-Death.html
This website presents the conclusions of a number of studies of gender bias in obituaries from 1900 through the present. In asking the question, “Does gender discrimination continue after death?” the authors concluded that indeed it does. To paraphrase, “These studies demonstrate little change over time in the recognition of women after death. Consistently, fewer obituaries are written about women, fewer obituary lines note the accomplishments of women, and fewer pictures of women appear on the obituary page.”
In the late nineteenth century, when Dean, Hester and Martha all passed away, obituary editors were exclusively male. This undoubtedly explains some of the bias. But this bias still persists today. And this discrimination is not race-, class-, or region-specific.
If, despite all my future efforts I never find Martha’s obituary, the underlying cause may be gender discrimination, a fact of life and death.
Hey Bev, about families moving west, I have an “Uncle” that was born in TN and died on the coast in California.
Hi Tom,
I also have family from Tennessee and Kentucky, mainly the Fitzgeralds. My “aunt” Anne Fitzgerald just died last year in Kentucky at the age of 103.
Cheers to all our ancestors who were brave enough to “pioneer” to the West Coast!
On the subject of brave ancestors, allow me to quote from a book compiled by my cousin, Edmund G. Fisher, who is also a member of Saponitown. This quote concerns the brother of my great-great-grandmother Martha Stephens Rogers. His name is James Bowles Stephens Sr., born November 19, 1806, died March 22, 1889.
Quoting from my cousin Ed’s book, Descendants of Thomas and Jane (Jefferson) Stephens of Baltimore County, Maryland 1745-2005, 2005 Edition:
“The original James B. Stephens Donation Land Claim encompassed 641.92 acres, or one section of land, and extended along the east bank of the Willamette River south from what is now East Oak Street to present-day Division Street, and east to what is currently Twentieth Street. But Jimmy’s acquisition of land did not cease with the important legal recognition given his large land claim by the new territorial government. He and Elizabeth [his wife] continued to amass additional tracts of property on the Willamette’s east bank and elsewhere for many years. In fact, the couple became such aggressive real estate investors that, at one time, they jointly owned at least 1,920 acres of prime timber and farmlands in East Portland. Today, this same property, located at the core of Oregon’s chief urban district, is worth many millions of dollars.
‘Jimmy’s’ shrewd intelligence was undimmed by his rudimentary formal education. His quick mind, combined with his other chief character traits — unquenchable ambition and a penchant for hard work — became the keys to his remarkable success in the Oregon Country. Among Jimmy’s business conquests was his ownership of Portland’s first cross-river ferry service, an important, hugely profitable enterprise that predated the area’s first bridges. But his most lasting contribution to Oregon’s commercial and civic development took place after the Civil War, when he founded the City of East Portland within the confines of his Donation Land Claim along the east bank of the Willamette River.”
Thanks to my postings on Saponitown, Ed contacted me and introduced himself. We have formed a strong friendship and I hope to contribute to the next edition of his book.
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