Saturday Night Fun- Who's Number 21?

(This post was inspired by one on Genea-Musings) The way I have my trees set up are very different from most people, I think, because I actually have three trees and each is fairly separate from each other with the exception of my immediate family. I have one tree for my father because I don't know a whole lot (although that is changing) about his ancestry, one for my maternal grandfather and one for my maternal grandmother. The reason I have two different trees on my maternal side is that there are so many people in each of those trees and it was just easier to keep track of everyone if I did it that way. This system has a bit of a drawback however in that I can't generate a true Ahnentafel for myself. So, I sat down and did it by hand and came up with a big fat "?" for my #21 (to make things easier to compute, your #21 on an ahnentafel starting with yourself as #1 is your paternal grandmother's paternal grandmother, see below for further explaination). How I did my Ahnentafel (ancestor surnames appear in parenthesis):

1. Me
2. My father
3. My mother
4. My paternal grandfather (Allen)
5. My paternal grandmother (Lapiccirella)
6. My maternal grandfather (Shinn)
7. My maternal grandmother (Berger)
8. My paternal grandfather's father (Allen)
9. My paternal grandfather's mother (Croad)
10. My paternal grandmother's father (Lapiccirella)
11. My paternal grandmother's mother (Daccia)
12. My maternal grandfather's father (Shinn)
13. My maternal grandfather's mother (Healey)
14. My maternal grandmother's father (Berger)
15. My maternal grandmother's mother (Wellons)
16. My paternal grandfather's paternal grandfather (Allen)
17. My paternal grandfather's paternal grandmother (Wood)
18. My paternal grandfather's maternal grandfather (Croad)
19. My paternal grandfather's maternal grandmother (Stokes)
20. My paternal grandmother's paternal grandfather (Lapiccirella)
21. My paternal grandmother's paternal grandmother (Unknown)
22. My paternal grandmother's maternal grandfather (Daccia)
23. My paternal grandmother's maternal grandmother (Unknown)
24. My maternal grandfather's paternal grandfather (Shinn)
25. My maternal grandfather's paternal grandmother (Tock)
26. My maternal grandfather's maternal grandfather (Healey)
27. My maternal grandfather's maternal grandmother (Nielsen)
28. My maternal grandmother's paternal grandfather (Berger)
29. My maternal grandmother's paternal grandmother (vonAllmen)
30. My maternal grandmother's maternal grandfather (Wellons)
31. My maternal grandmother's maternal grandmother (Webb)

Since my #21 is unknown, I'm going to go a different route but stick with the great-great-grandmother theme. I'm going to follow a strictly maternal line however and go #3 (my mother) to #7 (my maternal grandmother) to #15 (my maternal grandmother's mother) to finally #31 (my maternal grandmother's maternal grandmother). Number 31 on my tree would be Mary Anna Webb.


Mary Anna Webb was born 25 Jan 1862 in Marion, Lawrence, Indiana to Andrew Webb and Priscilla Mason. Mary Anna was described as a "blue-eyed red-headed little lady (4'9")." Mary Anna's mother died when Mary Anna was only thirteen months old and so her sisters (she was the youngest of nine and had three sisters who she was very close to) practically raised her. Andrew remarried Rhoda Dandridge (much to the resentment of Andrew's daughters who teased their new step-mother frequently) on 8 Apr 1865 and by this time the family was living in Coles County, Illinois. Andrew and his brood moved to Sheridan, Crawford, Kansas around 1868 and then to Colorado around 1872. They eventually settled at Animas (a little north of Durango) in La Plata County around 1875. Rhoda died that year while having her daughter, Lily Timberline Webb. Andrew remarried an Eliza on 17 Aug 1882 but not much is known about her and she did not head west with the family a few years later. Mary Anna Webb married George Washington Wellons (who was of Kentucky stock by way of Iowa) in June of 1878 when she was only sixteen years old. She and George had a hard farming life in the wilds of Colorado and were taken by con men for all they had on one occasion but they perservered and rebuilt. They had son Ebb, daughter Hermosa Florita or "Flo" (the Webbs had a penchant for naming their children after geographical landmarks and Flo was named after two area rivers, the Hermosa and the Florita. In addition to Flo's aunt Lily (who was born at the Timberline), she also had a cousin named Minnie Animas after the town where they lived), daughter Edna Mae and son John Chapple before leaving Colorado around 1885. The party consisted of Mary Anna and her family as well as some of her siblings and father Andrew. They left by covered wagon for Oregon and reportedly they hid in the wagons through Utah as they were "afraid of the Mormons." They settled in Keno, Oregon for a time and Mary Anna had a daughter Sarah "Sadie" there and daughter Fleeda (who died at a few months of age). The family left Keno for Siskiyou Co., CA and remained there. They lived in the lumber boomtown of Klamathon where they had my great-grandmother, Georgia and her brother, William. Klamathon caught fire and quite literally went out in a "blaze of glory" in 1902, after which time the family lived in Yreka. California was one of the first states to grant suffrage (in 1911) and Mary Anna appears on the voter rolls as early 1912. Mary Anna died on 12 May 1926 and is buried in Evergreen Cemetery in Yreka, California.
As far as her genes go, I am pretty short (5'3") and I do have blue eyes, but so do other branches of my family so who knows. When I look at pictures of my grandmother, mother and even myself, I do see the same deep-set almond shaped eyes, so I know that is part of the 6.67% of the DNA she gave me.

Comments

  1. Hi Leah,

    Great job adjusting to your own situation with this! I really should have laid out the ahnentafel list the way you did.

    You know quite a bit about your sweet little 2ndGGM who gave you those eyes and perhaps your height - a very impressive biographical sketch about a hard life and perseverance. You did exactly what I had hoped bloggers would do - write about someone they might not have written about before! I hope that distant cousins find you as a consequence.

    Your #31 is an even better choice, since she is one of the ladies who passed her mitochondrial DNA down to you and your siblings. I wish I had thought of that before I picked #21 randomly (actually because it was the 21st day of February).

    ReplyDelete

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