New Reynolds Info!

I had written to the Caribou Historical Society in Maine in the hope that they would have information about my Reynolds family or at least about the Green Ridge Grange. They wrote back that they had several newspaper articles about the Grange and that the plow that Everett Reynolds brought to the Grange was now taken care of by the Historical Society.

The man agreed to photograph the plow and send me the other things he had found but he said there wasn't really anything about my family, which puzzled me, since the Reynolds family was pretty involved with the town of Caribou from the get-go, if my other information was correct.

I received the information earlier this week, and should have written here sooner but I have been following up on things because I received a great deal of information.

The first thing in the stack of papers was a picture of the plow and then a closeup of a plaque that is on it, which describes Everett E. Reynolds' journey and, interestingly enough, mentions that he had a diary in which he kept note of things.

[Picture of the plow & plaque]

I couldn't believe that, and I noted that it was very interesting that he took this journey to Caribou in 1887, about the time he disappeared from Jefferson County, Wisconsin!!

The next few pages were about the Green Ridge Grange. It was essentially a meeting place for the local farmers and a place where dances and other public gatherings were held.

[Picture of the original Grange]

The picture above has the name Fred I. Reynolds written alongside it. He is the second cousin of my ancestor Elisha T. Reynolds.

There were several articles [click here] about the Grange, including one about it burning down not long ago and another a memoir by Maude Brown, a Reynolds descendant. The article includes interesting info about the Reynolds family first arriving in the area and how the area was first known as Reynolds, Maine. I found that to be pretty interesting!!

The next four pages were the history of Green Ridge Grange as compiled August 2, 1948. It mentions the story of the plow arriving there and again states that Everett E. Reynolds had a diary in which he wrote about his trip. It says that the diary was now in the possession of relatives. I still can't believe he had a diary, but I am hoping that it still exists! It could provide so much information on a man who disappeared from here without any true reason.

I wrote to a Dr. Reynolds of Fort Fairfield on the recommendation of Jim Ashby, and hopefully he will know something about this diary, and if it still exists.

[History of the Grange: page 1 ; page 2 ; page 3 ; page 4]

I was then at the end of my packet but I noticed that I had received a smaller letter sized envelope also from the Caribou HS. I wasn't sure what it was and I opened it to find a note explaining that it had been found after the first packet was sent out.

It was a photocopy of a letter, written to a Miss Ashby. I recognized the name first because she shares a surname with one of my contacts in Maine and also because the name was interwoven with the history of the Grange and other things I had come across in researching the Caribou area.

I was puzzled as to why it was included because it started out fairly regularly, a friendly update between friends, so I checked the end to find a signature: Everett E. Reynolds.

Well you know I almost dropped over dead at seeing this, most especially because the letter was dated Sept. 8, 1926 and was written from Canton, ME.

I will provide the transcription below and then further discussion. The letter contains so many grammatical errors that it would be pointless to include the standard "sic" notation after each one. Everett also didn't use periods so I will insert some where appropriate.

Canton Me Sept 8 1926
Dear Miss Ashby,
I rec. your letter last night[.] I was much plesed to here from you and well I rember you when you was a small Girl was well aquainted with your Father am glad your Mother is in good helth[.] I can say I am ingoying [enjoying] the best of helth for a man in his 80 year but I cant do as much work as I could in my young days[.] I have about all the work I can do all the time make a good living have ben in Canton 14 years but am thinking some of goin a way for the winter but cant till before next month[.] I am sending you a [piece??] from a Bangor (paper) that O.B. Griffin wrote about me and the old Plow I gave the Plow to the Green Ridge Grange 25 years ago and they think they have a [prise?] and I geuss [sic] they have[.] I live all a lone do my cooking and have just what I want have cooked minney [???] the winter in the woods & in sporting camps so you see I no how to cook[.] I should be plesed to here from you at enny [???] time and I will try and ans. [answer] in my humble way[.] it gives me cheer to here from frends [__ry]

Truly yours
Everett E. Reynolds

[Letter: page 1 ; page 2]

I am so excited about this letter. First, it gives a good idea of where he is living and confirms my ideas about that. He was on the 1910 census in Hartford, ME but in 1920 he was in Canton, ME.

Also, the age he gives corresponds to the man who is my ancestor.

Additionally, the paper he mentions, with the article about him and the plow, almost has to be the same article I have, or at least something very similar. In that case the article might have been written earlier that year, 1926, for the 25th anniversary of the plow being in the possession of the Grange. Now I can try to track down Bangor papers from 1926, because the article has "July 1" at the top. I am hoping that this will work out because the article I have is in bad condition and hard to read half of it, so I believe that if I get a copy of the full article it will help provide even more information about Everett E. Reynolds.

I am also hoping that this information will also help me narrow down when Everett died. Previously I knew only "sometime after 1920." But now I know that he was living in 1926 and seemed to be in good health. I need to try to get a hold of the 1930 census, and I found a woman in Maine who is going to try to help locate his death record. I can't imagine why it would not exist anywhere as late as 1930.

New Year update

Hey sorry for the long absence here, I was very busy with my semester and hardly had any time to update.

I have been contacted by a number of interesting individuals over the past few months. One of them was a Brandmueller. Not sure if there is a direct connection from his line to mine, but I would not be surprised, as they were from the same area and it is not a common name. I am hoping we can find out more information about these lines but the Brandmuellers have to this point remained quite elusive.

My uncle Bob Mayville has submitted a DNA sample to the ancestry.com labs. This could help put rest to one of the many mysteries surrounding the Mayville line, and we'll see if my theories are upheld. We will be able to determine whether there is any Native American blood and hopefully see if there are any roots in France.

I'm excited to hear back but at the same time I am leery of things like this. Submit a swab to some big company somewhere? I would prefer it if it was possible to make sure there weren't any screw-ups- mixing up DNA from other people or something, for instance. Who knows. I mean, I'm sure its legit or Ancestry.com would be ostracized forever... at the same time, you never know when the next scam is going to come along.

Anyway, since winter break began I have been sending off letters again. One I believe was inquiring about the McConnells again, and a couple to various places in Maine to check on more things with the Reynoldses. Honest to god they are hard to track down. I wrote to the town clerk of Jay, ME where the records for Canton, ME are supposed to be. They didn't have any death record for Everett Reynolds and gave me a new number to call. Not sure that will yield anything.

I wrote also to the Caribou, ME Historical Society. A town so small does indeed have its own Historical Society and I was able to obtain their address with the help of a couple more contacts I have made from around that town. I was lucky to find these people because otherwise I would be in the dark. Its unfortunate that everywhere I check seems to have no further information for me, as I heard back from the Caribou HS.

The man who wrote back said that there wasn't anything about the Reynoldses there, which is interesting because they were purported by several other people to have been integral to the beginnings of that town. They do, however, have pictures of the Green Ridge Grange which was mentioned in the newspaper article I have, and they also have the plow that Everett Reynolds brought to Maine from Massachusetts. He is sending me photos of that, too. I'm pretty excited just to see that. I wish we could somehow find out more, though. Its very unfortunate.

I have another thing on my bucket list and that is to finally call Mr. Hitchcock of Caribou. I have been waiting until I have time to come up with specific questions to ask him, as he is the town historian and from what I have been told, knew some members of the Reynolds family.

I'm also buckling down to get some work done on my family photo project. I'm trying to remember, really, where I left off as it was a few months ago. I have most pictures uploaded so I believe I will be getting them onto the website soon. Hopefully.

There should be some new updates at some point. Happy New Year!

Huycke, Reynolds, Brilliott, etc.

As usual during the school year, I've still been up to random little bits of things, usually as people contact me rather than me seek them out.

Last weekend I went to Appleton and was able to locate a few graves of ancestors on my dad's side of the family, namely Mathias Stark and his wife Margaretha Schmitz, as well as several of their children. I also located Margaretha's father Mathias Schmitz and her mother is buried next to him but her stone is now missing. I know she is there, though, because I called the cemetery (St. Joseph) prior to my visit to determine what section they were in. There was a proliferation of Starks, and abutting their plots were a great deal of Steffens which I assume must be related in some way (although I obviously don't know yet how). Hopefully I can figure that out.

I was contacted last week by a Brilliott descendent still living in Wisconsin. This is pretty exciting for my cousin Stephanie, since she had very much lost touch with a lot of her family. I have gotten a few more details about this family now from this contact.

I also received an email from a Huycke descendent whose ancestor's brother (William Henry Powers Huycke) was married to Rebecca N. Mayville. She has more information about this branch and may have some photos which are of interest. I sent her pictures that I have uploaded of Mayvilles and then of Unknown people on the Mayville side in the hopes that she or her family may recognize someone.

Finally, I was contacted today by a man who lives in Caribou, ME! He said he lives right by Green Ridge Cemetery and said the following:

The Grange hall you wrote of is no longer standing. It caught fire and burned approximately 15 years ago and stood about 1/4 mile north of the cemetery at the intersection of Green Ridge road and East green Ridge road. Green Ridge is located south east of the small City of Caribou and the cemetery is within the town limits of Caribou, The land where the cemetery lies was originally owned by Everett Reynolds, and the Cemetery originated with the burial of Everett Reynolds. I have heard of the "plow" you inquired about though I am not sure where it is located now, but it may be in a local museum that the Caribou Historical Society has set up. The Grange Hall was empty of its contents prior to its burning so my assumption is that the plow is still in existence. Local legend has it that Everett Reynolds died accidently. Supposedly he was in a wagon driving his team of horses when a Black bear suddenly appeared and spooked the horses. Mr Reynolds was thrown from the wagon when the team bolted and died as a result of the fall. It sounds to me that the Everett Reynolds you are inquiring about is the possible son of the Everett Reynolds buried in the cemetery along with his wife and other family members, The Everett Reynolds buried in the cemetery is the original settler of this area and the Reynolds family still has members residing in the area, though I don't believe any of them reside on Green Ridge.

I'm very excited about this and now that I have a contact in Caribou I hope to be able to learn considerably more about this puzzling part of the family. I'll post when I know more.

Mayville, etc.

It has been, obviously, far too long since my last post, and despite the 17 credits that are eating my alive right now, I have had some small amount of time to work on some genealogy. A couple of weeks ago I was working on fleshing out my Mayville tree a bit more. I was contacted first by a Christopher Mayville who says he is of the Vermont Mayvilles. Unfortunately he does not have much on his line and therefore we are unable to make a connection at this time.

I found out the exact death date for Sylvia Viola Mayville, a daughter of Ephraim and Loretta, although I do not know why she dies so young,... She and her husband, William Thompson (son of Roxy Huycke Peep and Lyman Thompson) both died in 1918 within a few days of each other. Obvious answer- the Influenza... but of course, not confirmed.

I also looked into the death of George Mayville, which was in 1955 and caused by him drowning himself. Apparently he had been in World War I and was gassed, and this caused mental issues wherein he had been in and out of a mental institution in Oshkosh before drowning himself near Unity. His obituary said he was buried at Brighton Cemetery. I found this odd since we have never found his stone, and he died in 1955 so the stone couldn't have disappeared completely by now.

We decided to take a short trip up to Unity and there we searched in vain for any sign of a stone for him. Now we think that both Loretta and George are there without a stone. I did, however, discover that Sylvia and Will are buried there and just never noticed for some reason. I can't believe I never noticed... but now I know.

On other fronts I am waiting for mail to come back... Apparently a letter I sent to a society in PA was returned, so I need to check with my source of that address and ask them what happened to the society. I am also still waiting to hear back from the OddFellows of Maine, and am hoping that I actually WILL hear back from them... and I believe there are a few other letter floating around unanswered as of yet. Hopefully I will find out more soon.

Reynolds in Maine!

I am exceedingly excited at present because a guy in Maine went to the Green Ridge cemetery for me near Caribou, ME to check out what Reynoldses might be there. He reported that the cemetery might as well be called "Reynolds Cemetery" for the amount of people there with that name. Unfortunately his camera had a serious malfunction so he had to return again at a later time.

Anyway, he was just able to send me the pictures and they are very great indeed. Included in the cemetery are my ancestors Elisha T. Reynolds and wife Adeliza Fuller. Included are most of Elisha's siblings and I think an obelisk for his parents.

But most interestingly enough are three particular stones.

The first says "Everett E. Reynolds" and the symbol of rings "F L T" with the birthdate of 3 Aug 1847 but no death date...

The next stone over is Everett's first wife Grace Melissa Harris Reynolds, saying "Mother" with the dates "1851-1876"

The next stone is their son, Herbert Ellery Reynolds with dates 1870-1886.

Now, this is interesting for many reasons. First, there were no other Reynoldeses in the Caribou/Green Ridge area except my family, so the Everett E. Reynolds in the article my grandma gave me almost certainly must be the same man who is my ancestor. But his stone in this cemetery has no death date-- did someone just not have money for the date, or was he buried elsewhere---- or did he truly disappear completely? The stone of his first wife, though, is part of the evidence I was looking for.

Also interesting is the death year for his son Herbert-- I have in my notes from a Reynolds family book that he died in 1880, but just a week or so ago I had been fiddling with censuses and I found an 1880 census with a boy of that age living with, I think, Everett's parents. No evidence of Verna Luella though (try as I might), who was the only child of Everett's first marriage to make it to adulthood.

Anyways, back from my tangent--- if Herbert was still alive until 1886, why did Everett not take him with when-if he went to Wisconsin? And about Everett's second marriage---- His third child in that marriage, Grace V., was born in 1886. After this time Everett disappears from Wisconsin and might or might not be the man of the newspaper article I have.

I need to find someone in Caribou, Maine who knows about this family, or at the very least about what Green Ridge was, and also if anyone has records for that cemetery. I need to find out if Everett was ever buried there or if he was buried someplace else.

I'm excited because this opens the door to new knowledge while also seeming to prove a couple of theories I had going based on information but I have to be careful to not be too hasty. I only hope that I can somehow find out more information.

Also, I've been working again on the McConnell front since the other day Bob Speckman sent me a link to a site which listed some Jefferson area newspapers in which a "Mrs. McConnel" was listed as dying sometime in November, 1892. I'm on the hunt for this article and it seems there might be someone who may finally be able to tell me definitively about some records for the Hake Cemetery in Jefferson. I'm hoping very much that that pans out since every source I get sends me in a circle back on info I already have and I really just need to find new information!!

Additionally, I spent the past few days up north in Shawano because the lady who currently owns a house my ancestor Collin Mayville lived in with his family, invited me to come help them restore the house. We spent the past couple days pulling old, old wood siding off of the house complete with old square peg handmade nails. That was really neat but also quite a lot of work and quite a lot remains to be done.

In addition, I have been curious about the "F L T" which was on Everett E. Reynolds's grave as well as, I noticed today, on the Mayville family stone up north in Shawano. I just googled to see if I could finally find it (because I think I have some sort of pendant or something that was said to be Collin's which has the F L T on it also) and I found this site: http://www.graveaddiction.com/symbol.html

It explains that F L T is: "A symbol of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, a fraternal organization. Stands for Friendship, Love, and Truth."


Another interesting tidbit about Everett E. Reynolds. If he was a member of this society...... ???

Vital Recs visit (Hurley, Christofferson) and McConnell letters

I meant to write since Thursday when I took a tirp to the Vital Recs office but I've been a bit busy, Thursday afterwards being spent with plugging new names into the genealogy and working over all of my usual sources to see if I could find new information.

I didn't research any of my ancestors this time but instead those of my cousin Steph and my uncle Eric. Since Eric's is shorter and disappointing I will tell what I found (or didn't find) on his family-

I looked up Eva Latus/Latue Skolaski to see what I could find of her parents, etc. It provided a father's name of John Latus but no mother. Eva died in 1932 of diabetes.

Next, I finally found George Young's death record. I had started at the beginning of the years and gone through each one to try to find the right George Young, which was challenging because it is English and a common name. In either event, I finally found that he died 22 Mar 1960 of prostrate cancer. In a turn of bad luck, it did not list his parents' names for some reason. I just thought of that I ought to look for an obituary in the Wisconsin State Journal sinc ehe died in the 60s and in Madison he should have an obit... although, probably, if the informant for the death record didn't have his parents' names, the person who put in the obit might not know also. I will have to check.

Another spot of unfortunate luck came when I located August V. Skolaski Sr.'s death record. He died in 1936 and I had been hoping to find the names of his parents. I was unlucky on that respect.

Lastly on Eric's side I looked up Herman Christofferson because I still hadn't found much on that line (isn't it funny on the most important names- the male line dominated lines in my families, its harder to find info? the Mayvilles, Diebolds, everybody-- doesn't go as far as the other more obscure and hidden names). From Herman's death record I found that his parents were Carl Christofferson and Tena Hanson. I tried locating more information about them but was generally unable to. It might take a thorough search of the vital recs office, again, to find anything on these two.


So, now I move on to my cousin Steph's genealogy, of which I found quite a bit to confirm what I had tried to find prior to my visits, and also enough to jog Steph's memory on her family since she remembered very little.

I looked at a bunch of the Hurley family first, starting with Steph's great-grandparents John S. Hurley and Katherine Byrnes. She had provided years of birth and death for them so I was able to find exact dates now. I confirmed a slight guess I'd had that John's parents were Thomas Hurley and Isabel Dockery. In the next week or so I will go to the historical society and check out that couple's death records which I found in the pre-1907 index. This will hopefully provide me more to look for when I try checking into Irish records-- and will hopefully be easier since its not such a common name as my Irish folks (Walsh, Hurst).

I of course found most of these Hurleys then in Wisconsin census and filled out the siblings of Steph's ancestors.

On Katherine Byrnes's death rec I found her parents to be Patrick Byrnes and Bridgett Keenan. Wasn't able to find much of them in the census mostly because of the amount of name variations on Byrnes/Byrns/Burns, but I will keep looking.

Next I checked out Steph's ancestor Paul T. Drescher. It didn't have his wife's name listed to that didn't help much in the way of trying to locate her but apparently she had pre-deceased him. Either way I found his parents to be Gottlieb Drescher and Minnie Kuhnau (although the record was hard to read that last name).

I looked at Steph's grandpa William Ignatius Hurley just to confirm his parents and dates I had. He is buried at Roselawn in Monona.

Lastly I found LaVetta A. Drescher Hurley's death record and found her mother's maiden name to be Marie Brilliott (father Paul Drescher, aforementioned). This is a really pretty surname (Brilliott) of French origin although the family came from Switzerland directly. I'm sure it will trace back to more direct French origins. Because of this unique surname, I found that they were the only family in the United States with that name at all in the census years currently available. They all lived in Sauk Co. Marie's parents were John Brilliott and Caroline Kaufmann. John's parents were the Swiss immigrants, Russ and Mary Agnes Brilliott. I have charted out most of their children as available from census and then online pre-1907 index. Caroline Kaufmann's parents were John and Josephine Kaufmann and I haven't found so very much about them. There are several people researching various Brilliotts (or at least, having one or two familiar characters in their genealogies, so I have been looking into that.



Finally, yesterday I received a letter from somewhere in Perry County, Pennsylvania regarding a letter I had sent quite over a month ago regarding records on Alexander McConnell being born there, in the hopes of tracking down his parents' names.

Well, as I should know by now it is impossible to find anything on this family, and this instance is not any different. The researcher was unable to find his family but there is a family record in their files from when Donald Schwennesen tried to reach them. I hadn't known they had tried to do any research, but it included Donald's letter which had in it much of the information I have already been able to confirm about the family. Unfortunately his letter was from 1979 and he died five years ago. I don't know his children's names or whereabouts otherwise I would write them regarding his researches... although I can't imagine they would be much more fruitful than my own.

In any event the researcher also included a chunk of photocopies out of the "History of York County Pennsylvania," which details the origins of the Hoeck/Hake family-- From their arrival in about 1748/9 to various endeavors throughout the country including, and it mentions this specifically- the group that came to Jefferson Co., WI. The document is rather dense and so will take a couple lookings-at to see if any of the information is viable for further pursuance.

RAOGK; Skolaski, Hurley, etc.

In preparation for my next visit to Vital Recs on Thursday (which was precipitated by my necessity of finding info about the Hurleys for Steph), I have been digging around to see what else I could spend time looking for while there.

Because of this I discovered that I had not yet found information on Frank Skolaski Sr.'s parents (Uncle Eric's family) besides that they were August Skolaski and Eva Latue. So I decided to look through the census and try to find the family in 1900, which I had been unable to do. I was able to find them with a very bad misspelling of the surname and found the approximate birth month & year for his parents. Then I was able to find them in other census years also with ridiculous misspellings and hidden in the households of their children and narrowed down that they lived past 1920. I did a google search on the name "August Skolaski" and since it is a unique name it came back with several hits which had to do exactly with this family. One was an article about August Skolaski's grandson also named August Skolaski who had something to do with the creation of a church somewhere around Madison. There were several other links including one to a genealogy for August & Eva's son John from someone on his wife's side. This gave approximate years of death for August and Eva so I will make sure to start with those years. I will hopefully be able to find the names of their parents, so that will be exciting.

The other day I did a little digging on the Steffen part of my family. Not much, just dealing with Emma Steffen and her husband Robert Posselt and their children.

I also am now a volunteer for Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness (RAOGK) (http://www.raogk.org/). This is mostly because for the past year and now for the next few years I have/will live in close proximity to the Historical Society and therefore will be able to constantly access things that people might not be able to if they live a considerable distance away, so I decided I should finally become a volunteer to put my abilities to some use.

Another reason is because I have used the same site twice.. I haven't gotten responses yet, really, except for the guy who I asked to go to Green Ridge Cemetery for me in Caribou, ME. He should be getting back to me soon with what, if anything, he found there.. and I'm pretty anxious about that-- but actually, very glad I was able to find someone who could go there at all! Of course I very much wish I was able to go there myself and check it out but thats not exactly possible with the current state of finances, etc. so I will have to make do with this.

I got my first request the other day and already fulfilled it. It is interesting being part of other people's genealogy and helping them find information important to their research. That's why most of the time I wish this could be a full time job rather than going to college for random stuff, and who knows if I'll actually end up doing that? But oh well, I suppose.