McGary and Summers Connection?

Genealogy is a fun hobby ...

• Puzzles to solve - I'm still working on Samuel Clark & Margaret Shimp but I have gotten closer to telling you what I've learned.
• New ancestors to find and research
• Discovery of surprising connections between family lines
• New living relatives to meet ...

A little less than a month ago, a distant McGary cousin found me through this blog, and I've also heard from a few others who may or may not be related - they're keeping an eye out here and watching for the launch of my website. In addition, I've had a couple contacts find me through my family trees on Ancestry.com ... Clark and Aston connections.

Did I get a little sidetracked from the cleanup I had been doing on my database? Well, sure ... but that's the idea behind getting more of my info online. So I'm considering this venture at blogging a success!

Getting back to the McGary cousin, he gave me some info posted by Del Groves¹ on RootsWeb that leads to a probable tie-in between my McGary and Summers lines. I have always thought of McGary as Mom's lines, and Summers as Dad's ... a "never the twain shall meet" scenario ... so this was an interesting theory.

Here's how it goes:

• One of his great-grandfathers, Isaac Newton McGary, was a brother to my great-grandmother, Cancedella (McGary) Aston.
• Isaac had a son, Willard, who married Clara Pritchard.
• Clara's mother was Lucy A. E. (Summers) Pritchard.
• Lucy's father, Elias Summers, was a younger brother of David Summers, MY 3rd great-grandfather.

So yep, my McGary and Summers line do appear to intersect, albeit distantly via marriage.  Cancedella was an aunt to Willard McGary.  Willard's wife, Clara, was a grandniece of David Summers.

Ha! Never say never!


¹ NOTE:  Del Groves' pedigree on Rootsweb led me to his website, "Our Family Saga, West Virginia & Beyond" which I love. He has sourced a lot of his info, which will help me confirm and prove its accuracy to my own satisfaction.

Lenora Summers Church

Lenora "Nora" (Summers) Church

Today marks the anniversary of the death of one of my great-grandmothers, Lenora Susan (Summers) Church, who passed away on 07 July 1965.  In her later years, she stayed in the homes of her daughters, including my grandmother, Nellie (Church) Kuhn.  The only memories I have of Nora are from the time period when she stayed with Grandma.  We lived across the road from Grandma, so I was over there a lot - especially since Grandma's house was surrounded by maple trees that were great for climbing!

Grandma had set up a hospital bed in a first-floor bedroom that was in a front corner of her house - the corner that was closest to all of those maple trees.  Mom didn't want me to visit as much once Nora came, thinking that noise I (and sometimes my cousins) made would disturb Nora.  However, Nora told Grandma that she enjoyed hearing us kids and that there was no reason not to let us continue playing there.

The one thing that always stood out in my memories was that Nora wore her hair in a really long braid; one of those things that seemed so cool to me back then.  The other thing I remember is that she was "hard of hearing" - although I've since learned that her hearing improved considerably when something was going on that she didn't want to miss!

Nora had married Eli Church on 20 November 1896 in Calhoun County, West Virginia - but until I started researching family history many years ago, I never knew why I didn't remember my great-grandfather at all.  Turns out there were two reasons:  he died when I was only 2.5 years old, but prior to that he and Nora were divorced.

Nora never married again.  Even though she was very religious and read her Bible faithfully, she always said she would never go to heaven because she was divorced (as recalled by some of her grandchildren during the 1999 Church family reunion.)

Nora was buried in the Limestone Presbyterian Church Cemetery on Rt. 250 at Limestone, West Virginia.

Samuel E. Clark & Margaret Shimp

Samuel E. Clark is my 2nd great-grandfather ... the father of my dad's paternal grandmother. How's that for a brain teaser?

I've been trying to put together a post about Samuel and Margaret, but the more I dig into my info, the more conflicts I keep finding. I don't want to post the conflicts here until I'm a little more sure of my line of reasoning.

Since I didn't make the June 30th goal I had set for myself, the least I can do for those of you who are waiting to see the Clark information is to go ahead and show you these photos of Samuel and Margaret:

Samuel E. Clark

Margaret (Shimp) Clark

Just to make the brain teaser a little easier to follow, especially if you're one of my Kuhn relatives ...

• Samuel and Margaret were the parents of Hattie Clark, who married Adam Kuhn.
• Adam and Hattie were the parents of Herbert Samuel Kuhn, who married Nelle Belle Church - they are my paternal grandparents.

If you're interested in the Clarks but not so much in the Kuhns, keep following the blog ... there will be more to come once I solve some of my own brain teasers!