07 Apr Family Tree Newsletter- April 6, 2024
Contents
THE GRAYBEARDS OF THE CIVIL WAR
In the last edition I mentioned from my family tree, my three- times Great Grandfather, John Van Vliet (pictured) of Brighton, Iowa, enlisted on December 27, 1862, at age 58 in Company H, 37th Iowa Infantry Regiment. The unit was the Graybeard’s regiment, as you had to be 45 or older to serve. They mostly guarded prisoners and such.
By enlisting in 1862, he would have left behind his 13-year-old son, my Great-Great Grandfather Luther. When Luther enlisted at age 16, he was a resident of Davenport, Iowa.
On July 13, 1864, in Memphis, TN, John was charged with disobedience for not performing guard duty for a train near the front lines. His version of the story (well written with excellent literacy) was that the terms of his enlistment only required his unit to serve within the lines. He claimed that he had tried to make this point to his commander several times, failing in that regard, and he refused to perform guard duty. He was court-martialed and lost one month’s pay for his actions but continued to serve.
He was finally mustered out at Cincinnati, OH, on May 12, 1865. On his discharge status, he is listed as 5 foot, 11 ½ inches tall, with a fair complexion, blue eyes, and light hair. He had been suffering from heart disease (chronic inflammation of the left ventricle) since February 1865 and was unfit for duty from that time on.
There is a 1917 note in his military file that his pension was forfeited due to the court martial.
As of 1870, the family was living back in Adair Co., Missouri. The census shows John living with his wife Susannah, their son John, and 23-year-old Sarah Isabelle Shepherd, who was “without occupation”.
According to Sarah Shepherd’s 1916 pension application, she and John married on April 13, 1870, in Adair Co., Missouri. He would be 41 years older than her at the time. Many younger women married old soldiers hoping to inherit the steady income of a pension, so she was eventually disappointed in that regard.
The document lists his first wife Susannah Bushey, who died on January 24, 1869. The part of this that doesn’t make sense is that the census was done on August 9, 1870, and shows that Susannah and John were married, and she was alive, and Sarah was a single person living with them. I found the marriage record, and it shows John marrying Sarah J. Shephard on April 13, 1871, so Sarah’s memory was off by a year. I am guessing likewise that Susannah Bushey Van Vliet died on January 24, 1871, after the census but before John’s second marriage.
John died on October 29, 1872, in Greentop, Schuyler, Missouri. He is buried in the Greentop Cemetery.
Besides others in the family tree include Luther, John had a son, George, who enlisted in 1861, served as a Sergeant at the beginning of the Civil War, and was promoted to Major. He was captured and held for 18 days at the celebrated Libby Prison in Richmond. He was exchanged on September 30, 1862. He was wounded at Gettysburg, losing three fingers on his left hand. He was assigned to the Veterans Corps, where, while on an assignment to arrest a draft evader, his fellow officer was shot and killed, and the revolver clubbed George himself. He was discharged in 1863. He later belonged to the Grand Army of the Republic veteran’s group and traveled to Gettysburg, where he helped place a monument to their unit.
John also had a son, Martin, who enlisted in the Iowa 8th Volunteers on August 10, 1861, in Washington, Iowa. He served as a private and worked as a mechanic. He was captured on April 6, 1862, at Shiloh, Tennessee, and was paroled in an exchange at Montgomery, Alabama, on May 28, 1862. He was discharged on September 7, 1863, at Camp Sherman, Mississippi, by General Sherman, as he was suffering from Tuberculosis. He died from Dysentery in St. Louis in the Lawson Hospital on December 30, 1863.
John was the second cousin of General Stewart Van Vliet. I wonder if he knew his relative had been court-martialed.
THE WASHINGTON FAMILY TREE PEDIGREE COLLAPSE
In the last edition, we had an article about Endogamy and people born of familial relations.
I came across this recent article using a different expression; they called it “Pedigree Collapse.”
The article was about the descendants of George Washington’s younger brother, Samuel, who lived at Harewood estate.
After Samuel Washington’s death, his children George Steptoe (pictured), Lawrence Augustine, and Harriet went to live with their uncle George Washington. The future president paid for George Steptoe and Lawrence to be educated at Georgetown Academy. Historian Ron Chernow said, “They were wild and uncontrollable and a constant trial to Washington.”
George Steptoe Washington married Lucy Payne, the older sister of future First Lady Dolly Payne Madison. They had a son, Dr. Samuel Walter Washington, whose Great-Great Grandson, Samuel Walter Washington, is the current owner of the Harewood estate.
The shared DNA between the living Washington and Samuel’s sons was more than the researchers expected. They attributed this to pedigree collapse — when marriages between relatives shorten the number of ancestors — caused by multiple cross-cousin marriages in the Washington family tree.
Read the full article here:
Washington family pedigree collapse
SILICON VALLEY, FAMILY TREES, AND POLITICS PART TWO
In the last edition, we covered the connection between Sergey Brin, founder of Google; his first wife, Anne Wojkicki, founder of 23andme; and his second wife, Nicole Shanahan. Not that we had the scoop that it would be announced this week that Shanahan would end up as the V.P. candidate to run with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (both pictured)
I left out some additional information on Wikipedia: Shanahan and Brin separated in December 2021, and Brin filed for divorce in January 2022. In 2022, the Wall Street Journal reported that a reason for the breakup was a “brief affair” between Shanahan and Elon Musk in 2021. Shanahan and Musk have denied the report. The Wall Street Journal said, “We are confident in our sourcing, and we stand by our reporting.”
Shanahan and Brin had signed a prenuptial agreement. During the divorce proceedings, Shanahan’s attorneys argued that she had signed the prenuptial agreement under duress and, in mediation, sought more than $1 billion of Brin’s $95 billion fortune. The divorce was finalized in 2023 in a confidential arbitration. Forbes reported that Shanahan likely received around 2.6 million Alphabet Class B shares from Brin, worth $390 million, in March 2024 and possibly received an additional, equal amount of Class C shares.
In 2023, Shanahan held a “love ceremony” of commitment with Jacob Strumwasser, an advisor at Lightning Labs, a Bitcoin software company. She described the event as a handfasting ceremony influenced by Druidic tradition. The pair met at the Burning Man festival in summer 2022.
Also, in an earlier edition, we covered Betty Boop’s story. We came across this collection of Betty Boop dolls in Branson, MO.
Betty Boop
AM I SIX DEGREES FROM KEVIN BACON’S FAMILY TREE?
You always hear the expression “six degrees from Kevin Bacon.” Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon or Bacon’s Law is a parlor game where players challenge each other to arbitrarily choose an actor and then connect them to another actor via a film that both actors have appeared in together, repeating this process to try to find the shortest path that ultimately leads to prolific American actor Kevin Bacon. It rests on the assumption that anyone involved in the Hollywood film industry can be linked through their film roles to Bacon within six steps. The game’s name references “six degrees of separation”, which posits that any two people on Earth are six or fewer acquaintance links apart.
I decided to look and see if I was related to Kevin Bacon. I am not; however, my wife is an 8th cousin twice removed from Bacon (is that more than six degrees?), as they share the ancestors, John Borton and Ann Kinton.
John Borton was born before 1634 in St. Michaels Parish Aynhoe, Northamptonshire, England. He married on April 12, 1658, at Aynhoe Ann Kinton of Croton in St. Michaels. She had been born around 1635/1640. They had eight children. They joined the Quaker church at Banbury around 1660. They may have come to America aboard the “Griffin.” They came from the Burton Meeting at Aynhoe, Northampton, England. They settled on 175 acres at Hillsdown, Evershaw Township, Burlington Co., New Jersey, on the south side of Rancocas Creek.
Their original log cabin still stands. John was a West Jersey Proprietor. He owned a part of Burlington Island and a 32nd of West Jersey. He and a friend were arrested in 1660 for refusing to take the loyalty oath, and he was fined for refusing to attend the Church of England. In 1665, some of their goods were confiscated for being absent from the parish. He bought 110 acres in 1680. He had surveyed 200 acres at the head of the Rancocas in 1682. They may have made a second trip in 1682 to England and back aboard the Amity. He was a member of the West Jersey Assembly in 1684. He also served as constable over 32,000 acres. He served several terms as road commissioner. He bought 100 acres in 1687. John died on July 31, 1687, at Northampton, Burlington. Ann died there in 1688.
THE MACY FAMILY TREE AND THE TITANIC
My wife marched in the 2019 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade; an annual parade presented by the U.S.-based department store chain Macy’s in New York City. The parade first took place in 1924, tying it for the second-oldest Thanksgiving parade in the United States; it has been held every year since, except from 1942 through 1944. Its signature giant helium balloons date to 1928, with smaller air-filled balloons having been used in 1927. The three-hour parade in Manhattan ends outside Macy’s Herald Square from 9:00 am to 12:00 pm Eastern Standard Time on Thanksgiving Day. It has been televised nationally on NBC since 1953.
In 2019, the balloons narrowly averted grounding due to the high winds. The Ronald McDonald balloon developed a bad leg and had to leave the parade. Therefore, her band, which included many senior citizens, had to run in full uniform while playing their instruments.
On a recent visit to a Titanic Museum, I learned that Macy’s is connected to that tragic event.
Here is some history. Rowland Hussey Macy opened four retail dry goods stores between 1843 and 1855. One of them was the original Macy’s store in downtown Haverhill, Massachusetts; it opened in 1851 to serve the mill industry employees of the area. They all failed, but he learned from his mistakes. Macy moved to New York City in 1858 to establish a new store named “R. H. Macy & Co.” on Sixth Avenue between 13th and 14th Streets. The location was far north of other dry goods stores at the time.
As the business grew, Macy’s expanded into neighboring buildings, opening more and more departments. The store used publicity devices such as a store Santa Claus, themed exhibits, and illuminated window displays to draw in customers. It also offered a money-back guarantee, although it accepted only cash into the 1950s. The store also produced in-house, made-to-measure clothing for both men and women, assembled in an on-site factory.
In 1875, Macy took on two partners, Robert M. Valentine (1850–1879), a nephew, and Abiel T. La Forge (1842–1878) of Wisconsin, a cousin’s husband. Macy died in 1877 from inflammatory kidney disease (Bright’s disease). La Forge died the following year, and Valentine died in 1879. Ownership of the company remained in the Macy family until 1895, when the Straus brothers, Isidor and Nathan, acquired the company (now called “R. H. Macy & Co.”). Isidor Straus and his brother Nathan Straus had previously held a license to sell china and other goods in the Macy’s store.
In 1902, the flagship store moved uptown to Herald Square at 34th Street and Broadway, so far north of the other main dry goods emporia that it had to offer a steam wagonette to transport customers from 14th Street to 34th Street. Although the Herald Square store initially consisted of just one building, it expanded through new construction, eventually occupying almost the entire block bounded by Seventh Avenue on the west, Broadway on the east, 34th Street on the south, and 35th Street on the north, except for a small pre-existing building on the corner of 35th Street and Seventh Avenue and another on the corner of 34th Street and Broadway. This latter 5-story building was purchased by Robert H. Smith in 1900 for $375,000 (equivalent to $13.7 million in 2024) with the idea of getting in the way of Macy’s becoming the largest store in the world: it is primarily supposed that Smith, who was a neighbor of the Macy’s store on 14th Street, was acting on behalf of Siegel-Cooper, which had built what they thought was the world’s largest store on Sixth Avenue in 1896. Macy ignored the tactic and built around the building, now carrying Macy’s “shopping bag” sign by lease arrangement.
Isador and his wife Ida were traveling back from a winter in Europe, mostly spent at Cape Martin in southern France. They were passengers on the Titanic when it hit an iceberg at about 11:40 pm on April 14, 1912. Once it was clear the Titanic was sinking, Ida refused to leave Isidor and would not get into a lifeboat without him. According to friend and Titanic survivor Colonel Archibald Gracie IV, when he offered to ask an officer if Isidor could enter a lifeboat with Ida, Isidor refused to be made an exception while women and children were still on board. At the same time, Ida is reported to have said, “I will not be separated from my husband. As we have lived, so we will die together.” Ida gave her maid her fur coat and insisted she get into a lifeboat. Isidor and Ida (pictured above) were last seen on deck arm in arm; eyewitnesses described the scene as a “most remarkable exhibition of love and devotion”. The ship sank at 2:20 am.
Ironically, among his great-great-granddaughters is Wendy Rush (née Weil), the widow of Stockton Rush, who founded the deep sea tourism company OceanGate and lost his life on a dive in a submersible in 2023 to the wreck of the Titanic.
WHAT ARE QUATERNARY TWINS?
I also recently learned that if identical twins marry identical twins, their children, whom we would typically think of as cousins, in the family tree would biologically be more like siblings than cousins. The term used is quaternary twins.
WHAT ABOUT YOUR FAMILY TREE?
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