My 2nd Introduction: Why I'm Here

Did I marry a cousin?

After posting my 16-Ancestor introduction here, and being so warmly welcomed to this community, I feel as though a couple more introductions are warranted. This can can be considered the first part of my genealogy origin story as a late-in-life convert.

Before 2018

My two grandmothers died within eight months of each other in 2002 (my maternal, “Mom,” at age 89) and 2003 (my paternal, “Grandmother Stockdale,” a month shy of 96).

My parents’ wedding with photos of my two grandmothers in their younger days, possibly very close to my parents’ ages on this date.

Following their deaths, my younger sister and I ended up with an unexpected repository (just shy of a trove) of both family’s photographs, albums, scrapbooks, scraps, and various other I-wonder-why-she-kept-these. Credit to my sister for, even then, starting to compile what would become the roots of our Stockdale-Armstrong tree.

My only contribution in the subsequent years was to scan and attempt to organize these genealogy ‘assets.’ By the end of 2003 I had scanned representative collections of the best of the photos and copied them onto two CDs for distribution (meaning the U.S. Postal System) to our few cousins on our respective sides of the family.

Digital media created from the genealogy assets bequeathed by my two grandmothers. Only one of which I can lay hands on at the moment.

Please take my word for it that the Howdy Folks graphic above, created by Grandmother Stockdale in the 1930s, served as the background label of the “Stockdale Family Album” CD, equivalent to that for the Armstrong’s. (And with that, the ‘organizer’ admits he can’t find the expletive-deleted thing.)

I should also say that what limited family-beyond-grandparents history I knew prior to scanning all this stuff was the fact that I knew Grandmother Stockdale’s maiden name was Eitelman. I also knew that I got my middle name from my great-grandfather, Edward Eitleman. And I knew that the Eitelman’s came from Germany, probably before 1900.

And I distinctly remember going to their house in Fort Worth, Texas – the same house I would learn later was the birthplace of my father, his sister, his brother, and their mother. I associate rye bread with bacon for breakfast with both my great-grandparents and Fort Worth.

I knew this about my great-grandparents because I was fortunate enough to actually know and remember them – even without the photos.

Until six years ago, that was all the family history I knew and more than I really needed.

August 2018 and My DNA Test

Here’s where I credit my sister for staying with the family tree effort through the years. She started with an early pre-online version of Family Tree Maker in the 90s, then moved online with Ancestry around 2010.

In 2018 she ordered an Ancestry DNA test and, not that I knew anything about it – or cared – a couple months later she ordered one for me. My results arrived that August.

That was August of 2018 when I was living in Albuquerque, New Mexico. My sister lived outside of Fort Worth in Texas, where I’m more or less from.

That same month, I: a) gave notice to leave my job after months of internal conflict; 2) put my house on the market; and 3) started moving stuff into storage since I didn’t know for sure what I was going to do next – retire, look for another job, stay in New Mexico, move back to Texas, crawl under a rock and dig? I gave a passing glance at my DNA results and put them in a file to look at … whenever, and wherever, they were unpacked.

Whenever came along in early 2019 after I had moved all of my stuff from storage in Albuquerque back to Texas. Wherever turned out to be the guest room in the home of my said sister and her husband. That’s when I finally looked closely at not just my DNA results, but the family tree that my sister had maintained all these years on Ancestry.com.

And a couple of absorbing questions arose that propelled me on my way down this family history road and onto what’s become a rather passionate personal obsession.

1. Had I Married (and Divorced) My Cousin?

I married my high school sweetheart in 1978. We had one child, a daughter, and divorced in 1993. Neither of us remarried. Because of our wonderful daughter (superlative adjectives resisted), we’ve been able to maintain a familial-ish relationship despite our differences.

I vaguely remembered a conversation that she (my ex-) and I had with my Mom Armstrong back in the ‘70s. As I recall we were sitting in Mom’s kitchen in Carlsbad, New Mexico, and Mom casually dropped that her granny’s last name was Latimer.

Which also happens to be my daughter’s mother’s maiden name. What a coincidence! Life proceeded.

But in early 2019, living with my sister and having her walk me through her/our family tree, it occurred to me that if Mom’s maiden name was Latimer, I must be related to a Latimer – other than the Latimer I had married. Hmm.

I was hooked. My future beckoned.

My sister had documented the Latimer branch of Mom’s tree as:

My maternal grandmother’s tree showing her Latimer lineage (Credit to DNAPainter.com and Jonny Perl for the quick tree-maker; long-time subscriber)

As I started to work on my own Ancestry tree, I quickly realized that Albert H. Latimer was a big deal! In addition to having had (at least) three wives and (at least) nineteen documented children, and warranting a “Famous Memorial” on FindAGrave, Albert Latimer was one of the fifty-nine co-signers of the 1836 Texas Declaration of Independence – 4 days before the Alamo. A true “Texas Patriot!”

So I had bragging rights for at least one of my tree branches! And I had the answer to the first necessary question as to whether my ex-wife and I shared a Common (Latimer) Ancestor. I was off and runnin’ up that ancestral hill!

But … the more I tried to document the relationship connecting Albert Hamilton Latimer with my grandmother’s granny Ella Latimer, the more inconsistencies appeared.

My 2nd great-grandmother Ella Latimer Henry was known and well-documented within the family. I have the bible presented to Ella, with an inscription by her son (“Uncle Bud,” as Mom referred to him), six weeks before she (Ella) died on 16 February 1920.

The large-print, New Testament “book” that A.H. Henry (“Uncle Bud”) presented to his mother, my grandmother’s grandmother, about six weeks before she died.

I’ve been to the small, hidden-from-the-road church cemetery outside of Leonard, Texas, where Ella and my 2nd great-grandfather Burr Hamilton Henry are buried. The cemetery is just thirty-five miles from Lone Oak, Texas, where Mom was born.

Note that the inscription reads “ELLER V.” instead of ELLA. Another inexplicable mystery. Courtesy of the author.

So I was confident I had the right Ella Latimer and Burr Hamilton Henry as my 2nd great-grandparents. And my Ancestry DNA match results supported that conclusion because I had close 2nd-3rd cousin matches whose trees showed Burr, Ella, and their seven children – same as my tree. (Actually, then it was still technically my sister’s tree that had “inspired” –ahem– my tree. Before I branched out on my own … rim shot!)

Ancestry showed those matches as sharing Burr and Ella as our Common Ancestors. And the Ancestry ThruLines projected Ella’s parents to be Albert Hamilton Latimer and Mary Jane Gattis. So that must be right, right?

Except they were not, in fact, right. Or even correct.

I had stumbled upon the discovery that there were two Ella Latimer’s documented as being born in either northeast Texas or western Arkansas in 1861 – mine was born 16 February 1861, whereas famous Albert’s Ella was born five weeks later on 25 March 1861. Beyond the name and birth year, nothing was the same.

My Ella married Burr Henry on 2 June 1880 in Paris, Lamar County, Texas, per county records. The other Ella married Wade Parks in Red River County, Texas, on 7 August 1885, most likely in Clarksville – only 30 miles due east of Paris, Texas.

My Ella Latimer Henry died in 1920 and is buried outside of Leonard, Fannin County, Texas – see above. Ella Latimer Parks died thirty-six years later in 1956 and is buried in Clarksville – 90 miles east of Leonard – see below.

Image from FindAGrave. Note the seal identifying this Ella as “Daughters of the Republic of Texas.”

So I was convinced that my 3rd great-grandfather Latimer was not the “Texas Patriot” Albert Latimer. I didn’t have a clue, at that point, how to get past this identity confusion that rippled back into my ancestral history. So I couldn’t work back up the tree to figure out if my daughter was, indeed, her own 4th, 5th, or 15th cousin.

Now I, and my commonly-ancestered 2nd and 3rd cousin descendants of Burr and Ella faced a second vexing question.

2. Who were Ella Latimer Henry’s parents?

(Left) Photo of Burr and Ella with their four youngest daughters c. 1900; (Right) An earlier photo of Ella and inscription. Mom Armstrong inherited her deep dark eyes.

To be continued.

Hint: think DNA.