This is a Mothers' Day post from a couple years ago reposted here
We will start with
1. The Incomparable Marge, who is the mother of the TOFsprings, shown here in their cute-and-innocent versions:
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| Sara, a/k/a Dear in the Headlights |
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| Dennis: Wait, What's Going On Here... |
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However, the I/M is herself the daughter of a mother, and while we have
no digitized picture of the two in Madonna-and-child pose, we do have
them individualized, as it were:
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| Elsie Vera Hammontree, mother of the I/M |
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| The Marge, imitating a bean bag |
2. Elsie Vera Hammontree (1924-1951) of Oklahoma died when the
Marge was very young but she is remembered for humming Strauss waltzes
while she did her ironing in the kitchen. Margie was her only child, and
her dad never remarried. The Hammontrees had settled in colonial
Virginia, fought in the Revolution (two were at Valley Forge, and one
died there), went over-the-mountain into East Tennessee, fought with
Andy Jackson at Horseshoe Bend in the War of 1812; fought in the Army of
the Cumberland under Schofield in the Civil War (wounded at Resaca) and
headed west to Oklahoma by way of Arkansas. Elsie married
Claude Lee White, whose mother was a Choctaw with the splendid name of
Maggie Jam
and who had raised her two sons alone in Ft. Towson, Choctaw Nation (later
part of Oklahoma). For her part, Elsie was the daughter of....
3. Ora Vanora Harris (1901-1967)
of whom TOF has no
digitized photograph. The Marge was largely mothered by this grandmother
(and by multiple aunts) after Elsie died. The Harrises had once lived in Hardin Co., KY, neighbors to Thomas and
Abraham Lincoln, and moved with the Lincolns to Spencer Co. IN. (One
bore the delightful name of
Greenberry Harris.) But when the
Lincolns moved again to Illinois, where Honest Abe grew to become
famous, the Harrises pushed on to Cold Springs, MO and thence to Indian
Territory, where Ora married
John B. Hammontree and bore three daughters and two sons in the bustling metropolis of Quinton, OK. Ora's mother was...
4. Sadie Frances Holland (1884-1918), who had been born in Louisiana and moved with her parents to Chickasaw Nation in 1898, where she married
Charles Harding Harris
and had five sons and three daughters. She died young of bronchial
pneumonia aggravated by measles after a 13 day illness. The Hollands
seem to have moved through the Lower South, perhaps starting from
Mississippi. Sadie was the daughter of...
5. Annie Eliza Helms (1861-1939), who had been born in Lee Co., Georgia of North Carolinian parents, was married in Claibourne, LA, to
Henry Thomas Holland,
with whom she had five children: two boys, two girls, and one unknown
who died in infancy. They moved to Chickasaw Nation, where they farmed
next plot to Charlie Harris, who married their daughter. She died in her
late 70s of a brain hemorrhage brought on by hypertension. She was the
daughter of...
6. Gatsey [Helms] (c. 1826 - after 1880), maiden name not yet known, was born somewhere in North Carolina. About 1844, she married
Henry Helms,
of a prominent North Carolinian family, bearing seven
children, of whom Anne Eliza was the youngest. Between 1847-48 they
moved to Georgia; in 1850 were in Chambers Co. Alabama; and by 1860 back in
Lee Co. Georgia, where Anne was born. She lived through the Civil War
and (to go by her residence) Sherman's March to the Sea. She was widowed
sometime between 1860 and 1880, when she was living in Claiborne LA,
where her daughter married Henry Holland. Not known when or where she
died.
n. Mitochondrial Eve. Okay, so she's everyone's eventual mother.....
TOF, meanwhile, is also the son of a mother; to wit:
1. Rita Marie Singley (1924-1993) a/k/a "The Mut"
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| Mut, displaying her bona fides as a mother |
TOF is descended from a long line of German mothers. This is an
especially daunting thing, for there is nothing more immovable than one.
When the pastor at the church hesitated to baptize TOF on the grounds
that the parish was German and the name was Flynn -- "Take him to St.
Bernard's. That's where the Irish go." -- the Mut said that she would
take TOF home and baptize him herself under the kitchen sink. She would
have done it, too. The pastor caved.
The
Singleys had come from Gemeinde
Oberhausen (Upper
Houses) in the Grand Principality of Baden around 1854, in the aftermath
of the famine, turmoil and oppression following the failed Republican
revolution of 1848. They had lived there or in the neighboring community
of
Niederhausen (Lower Houses) since the close of the Thirty
Years War in the mid-1600s. The name had been originally spelled Zängle.
In Nockamixon Twp, Bucks Co, PA,
the name became Zingley, later Singley. Her mother was...
2. Helen Myrtle Schwar (1896-1952) a/k/a "Big Mom"
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| Big Mom, with her smaller brood: Mut in arms, twins Ralph and Paul below |
Big Mom is the literal translation of Grossmutter, the German word for
grandmother. We lived in her house two doors up the street for five
years. Technically, by modern standards, we were homeless. Among my fond memories at life up the street, is Big
Mom's theory that the cure to all illnesses was an enema. Come Christmas, she dressed up as Santa and brought gifts. She
had married
Harry Singley, a veteran of the Great War, and a
bricklayer. There is a story about him and bricklaying which must await
another day. They had three children: a set of identical twins and the
Mut. Her three children eventually moved into houses that were only a
couple doors away. Each received a tree, in the traditional German
fashion of celebrating special occasions with a tree, sister sycamores,
and though two of them have since gone to that Great Woodpile in the
Sky, their offspring litter the south side to this day.
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TOF (r) and his Milchgeschwester (c)
Milk-siblings were those who suckled at
the same breasts. |
The
Schwar family (the name rhymes with "swear" but lost its
umlaut long ago) came from Niederhausen and see the brief recap of the
Singleys, above. The name means "heavy," and in the records
of Oberhausen/Niederhausen (now called Rheinhausen) the Schwährs were
stone masons back to the late 1600s. The stone work on TOF's home was
laid by Mut's uncle Leo Schwar. There is a story about Pere assisting
him, which will await some other day.
The whole area on that part of South Side was once known as Schwartown
for the obvious reasons, not least of which are the stone houses. The plethora of interrelated families from Oberhausen/Niederhausen
contributed to the firm conviction of TOF and his Milchgeschwester that
every person we were introduced to was related to us in some fashion.
Schwar, Singley, Metzger, Deck, Keck, Breiner, Raisner, Albus,
und so weiter all went back to those same two villages on the Rhine at the edge of the Black Forest. Near
Eifelheim, if you read famous SF novels....
3. Frances Hungrege (1870-1926)
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Frances: I'll see your five and raise you ten
Big Mom on far right |
Mut's grandmother, third from left in the back row, lived in the big stone house on the next corner. She married
Francis Joseph Schwar, a stone mason, in 1894. The Hungreges,
mirabile dictu
did not come from Baden, let alone Oberhausen/Niederhausen, but rather
from Westpfalz, which was then ruled by Prussia. Not much else is known about her.
She was the daughter of....
4. Magdalena Rieß (1836-1901)
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Magdalena Riess,
No family shots |
Magdalena emigrated from (you guessed it) Niederhausen in 1854 "to visit
friends" (according to her passport) and never went back. In the absence of passport photography,
the passport describes her in that infinitesimal German style. So we know she
was 5 Schuh and 1 Zoll tall [about 5'1"], slender figure, long face,
healthy complexion, black/brown hair, low forehead, and so on. She
married
in Haycock Run, Bucks Co, PA, to
Conrad Hungrege, formerly a steamboat captain on the
Rhine. They had eight children, six of them
boys. She was the daughter of....
5. Franziska Stefan (1799-1856)
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| Fishermen on the Rhine |
who was born, wed, and died in Niederhausen. She married
Johann Rieß,
a fisherman on the Rhine and was mother to nine children, eight of them
girls. Four of her children died in infancy or childhood, one indeed
after four days. We are now in the days before antisepsis, when cutting
edge medicine meant breeding superior leaches and measuring precisely
the amount of blood let. Magdalena was the last of Franziska's children
and lived to be 65 in America. A fortunate thing
she was not easily discouraged and did not succumb to grief. She was
the daughter of...
6. Maria Anna Pflüger (c.1772-1845)
who likewise was born, wed and died in Niederhausen. She was the third wife of
Josef Stefan
and had by him four children, two of whom died in infancy. Franziska
was the second daughter of that name, her namesake having died scant
eight months earlier at just about a year's age. After Josef died, Maria
Anna took a second husband, viz., Jakob Metzger. During her lifetime,
Napoleon was running hither and yon across Europe, including across the
Germanies. M. Anna's mother appears to have been
7. M. A. Schwörer (???-???)
who married
Georg Pflüger, also a fisherman. But at this point,
even German record-keeping falters and it may be that some records were
lost during the Napoleonic wars. There is a gap in the microfilms. So
far, TOF has not a clue about these more remote ancestors.
n. Mitochondrial Eve
Since she is everyone's maternal ancestor, this means the Marge and TOF
are remote -- very remote -- cousins. But this is no surprise.
Considering how many of TOF's ancestral mothers came from
Oberhausen/Niederhausen, one is not astonished to learn that he is his
own seventh cousin.
Other Mothers
TOF hasn't even scratched the surface of those mothers to whom we must
credit our mere corporal existence. This is only the pure maternal
strain. There are also the mothers of fathers to be considered.
Sarah Jane Metzger from (where else) Niederhausen. Pere's mother
Blanche Jean Cantrel (whose ancestry wends its way back through the Pas de Calais). The delightfully named
Sinia Jane Chisenhall (who lurks on the Marge's ancestral tree).
Mary McGovern,
of whom a photograph shows her playfully aiming a shotgun at the
photographer. (The McGoverns came from the Glan in Co. Cavan, a
then-remote and inaccessible valley where they made their own whiskey.
She knew how to use that shotgun.) Then there was
Nancy Holloway,
who was a model for Mae Holloway (up to a point) in "Melodies of the
Heart." But we have to draw the line somewhere or we will end up with
every mother who has ever lived.
Though, on second thought, why not? Consider them, and yours, added as well.
