Blish - Blush

So, I’m taking a break from the Mallette side of my mother’s family to research the “Blish” side. I have learned that Blish and Blush were interchangeable many generations back contributing to mass confusion and adding to the need for a wall of post-it notes. I first run into the undecided spelling of the last name with Joseph Blish/Blush, Jr. (1762-1848). This interchanging of last names was detrimental in Joseph’s application for pension for his service during the Revolutionary War, his claim was rejected due to no service records being found - under the spelling of Blush. But, they are there under the spelling of Blish, a discovery made in 1902 by a family researcher writing a book on the “Blish” family. When reading his pension records, under the name Blush, I see that a contributing factor could quite possibly be due to penmanship, and probably just the family not being consistent.  I believe as the researcher in 1902 that this Joseph Blush is the same Joseph Blish that is great great grandfather to my  great grandmother Margarite Rose Blish Mallette Rash, my mother’s grandmother.  In the records at the National Archives that hold the original documents is the annotation of the researcher in 1902 and the records are now cross filed under Blish too.  Also within the pension records are two documents attesting to the service of Joseph, one from his daughter Almira and one from his son Oliver, another validation that these two Josephs are one in the same.  I have discovered two books on the family. Interestingly, one for each spelling of the name and both documented with various resources that are similar. So, when researching this line my suggestion is to try both spellings….Blish….Blush…happy hunting.

Middletown, Delaware County, New York

It looks quite possible that two family lines (one on my mom’s side and one on my dad’s side) lived in the same community in New York. The Blish and the Graham families, ghee what a small world it was a couple hundred years ago.

The Civil War, it can be such a small world.

Imagine my surprise when researching the Blish side (on my mother’s side) of my family when I see that the brother in-law (Capt Theodore Lane) of my relative, Alfred Day Blish, served under my great x3 grandmother’s Roxcenia (Butterfield) Dickisson (on my father’s side) brother’s (Charles Butterfield) regiment. Wow, that was a mouth full.  There was no easy way to type that all out without a chalk board, I’m limited to electronic pen and paper here.  And, he was mustered out in Missouri when my  great great grandfather John W. Cullimore (on my father’s side) was at Jefferson Barracks too. I was  researching Alfred and stumbled upon a lengthy section on his brother in-law and sister (Caroline Melissa Blish) in “Commemorative Biographical Record of Prominent and Representative Men of Racine and Kenosha counties, Wisconsin: containing biographical sketches of business and professional men and of many of the early settled families”, J.H. Beers & Co, 1906.    

Mallette

What an elusive family you are!  In hopes to learn more about my direct family line I try researching  my great grandfather’s brothers, no luck with his sisters yet. I find information on some them, but John Paul, or Paul John, why can’t I find out more about you? I know where you are buried and that according to a 1930 census you remarried.  Whatever happened to her?  Your father Peter is just as mystifying. I lost track of him in Bangor, New York.

 

I’m amazed at the number of divorces in this family. It could very well be that not only did my grandfather divorce my grandmother and his father did divorced my Great Grandmother Margarite but it seems that my Great Great Grandfather could have possibility too? I hope that is not the case. Alphronia Dwyer where are you? Did you die at an early age, move to Canada, left the family?

 

I’ve not given up yet…the hunt for puzzle pieces continues!

Margarite Rose and George Orville Blish

I discovered today that brother and sister Blish married brother and sister Mallette. My Great grandmother Margarite married Paul John (or John Paul, birth certificate and death certificates contradict each other) Mallette and her brother, Orville, married his sister Elizabeth J. Mallette.

James Cullimore (1898-1868) and Benjamin Nelson Graham (1828-1885)

Oh how frustrating it is to see so many people on Ancestry.com that have my greatx3 grandfather James listed as the James Cullimore of Utah. Don't remember seeing anywhere that he was a Mormon, nor that he lived in Utah and had a wife named Clara Fowlke.  And, to see people listing my greatx2 grandfather Benjamin as living, dying and being buried in California.  I try to email them and tell them of their errors, with little success.  Check your resources people before you add to your Ancestry.com tree.

John and Suzanna Kate (Cullimore) Flanagin

Don't really know why I've become obsessed with finding the parents of John W. Cullimore's sister's husband. Because it is a mystery? Because a great grandson has emailed me asking for any information I have on Suzanna?  What I do find interesting is that there are two sets of John and Suzanna Flanagins in the Ancestry.com databases and member created trees. And, within Ancestry.com people have these two intertwined within their trees. Suzanna Kate Cullimore's husband John Flanagin didn't not live, die, nor was he buried in Pawnee,Nebraska in 1905. Her husband live to around 1930. There seems to be two James Flanagin's that people are claiming to be the father of her husband. Both have different birth and death dates. I'm inclined to believe if one of these is his father that it would be the one born in 1811.  But as of this date I have no proof of who his father was.  Then there is the spelling of the last name. I'm sure that contributes to all the confusion...Flanagin (Suzanna's husband's spelling), Flanagan and Flanigan. Of course one could say that his family may have changed the spelling along the course of time.

Genealogy becomes a mania, an obsessive struggle to penetrate the past and snatch meaning from an infinity of names.  At some point the search becomes futile... there is nothing left to find, no meaning to be dredged out of old receipts, newspaper articles, letters, accounts of events that seemed so important fifty or seventy years ago.  All that remains is the insane urge to keep looking, insane because the searcher has no idea what he seeks.  What will it be?  A photograph?  A will?  A fragment of a letter?  The only way to find out is to look at everything, because it is often when the searcher has gone far beyond the border of futility that he find the object he never knew he was looking for.  ~Henry Wiencek

 

Weigandt Pleve Chart

     My dad's Aunt Helen, and his cousins Sandy and Linda, gave me a copy of a Weigandt Pleve chart yesterday they received from another person researching his mother's Weigandt family line to/in Russia.  I believe the chart goes back to when our family emigrated from Germany to the Volga region of Russia.
     Families emigrated from various parts of Germany in response to the manifesto of Katherine the Great, a German Princes, in 1763. This same stream of emigration also brought the Pennsylvania "Dutch" to the American colonies.  They were allowed to retain their own language, customs and religion.  After the freeing of the serfs in Russia in 1861, the reforms that followed greatly changed the status of the German colonists. Their local self-government was gradually being interfered with and military serviced forced upon them.  With this came a great emigration in the 1870s in large numbers to South America, Canada and the United States. In the States they mainly settled in Kansas, Nebraska and the Dakotas since this region most resembled where they came from. Nebraska being the central hub.  These groups of individuals were often referred to as Russian Germans, or White Russians.
     My Great Grand father Jacob Weigandt arrived in America 9 Nov 1911, emigrating from Hook, Russia to settle in Lincoln, Nebraska. My Aunt Helen is first Generation American along with her brother, my grandfather, Albert Weigandt. Jacob's brother, Oswald, traveled with him but was denied entry due to possibly having pink eye. He then traveled to and settled in Argentina where we now have distant cousins
     More about Jacob, his first wife Mary and his second wife Katherine (sister to Mary) during another post. I can't wait to study the chart further and to figure out our Weigandt line.

Margarite Rose Blish Mallette Rash (1895 -1973)

The obituary for my great grandmother. Throughout her life there were routine miss spellings of her name, making looking for her all the more difficult.  Margarite is in fact her first name. To make it even more difficult was my mom's mom refusing to talk about her first husband, Lloyd.  The break through came by a chance finding of my cousin Terry. She is related through a sister of Lloyd.  I know this to be her obit because of the names listed. Lloyd Mallette was my grandfather. I made a request for a photo of her niche at Acacia Cermetery. I hope someone will fulfill my request thrugh Find A Grave.

Lloyd George Mallette (1914 - 1961)

My mom’s father. He is buried in Golden Gate National Cemetery. He died the month after my mom and dad were married. My mom only knew his name since my grandmother refused to talk about him.

Barbara Jean Mallette Weigandt (13 Mar 1943 - 10 Dec 2010)

My mom passed away last month. She is now without pain and is with our Lord. We miss and love you, tell everyone we said hello and we will be together again. 

Just Sleeping

Now the laborer's task is over;

Now the battle day is past;

Now upon the farther shore

Lands the voyager, at last.

There the tears of earth are dried;

There its hidden things are clear;

There the work of life is tried

By a greater judge than here.

"Earth to earth and dust to dust",

Calmly, now, the words we say;

Left behind, we wait in trust

For the resurrection day.

Father, in Thy gracious keeping

Leave we, now, Thy servant sleeping.

Ecclesiastes 12:7

Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was;

and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it. 

Margarite Rose Blish Mallette Rash 1895-1973



This is a picture I received today of my great grandmother from my newly found cousin. Since my mother did not have contact with her father or his side of the family after he and my grandmother divorced she never knew her grandmother or had any pictures of that side of the family. Margarite divorced my great grandfather John Paul Mallette. With the exception of my grandfather Lloyd George Mallette, their three girls were sent to live with other relatives. One of the girls Lenora Mae Mallette, a year older than Lloyd, was my cousin's grandmother. My grandfather stayed with my great grandfather, eventually they moved to California where my great grandfather remarried a divorcee with a daughter.

Gathering Puzzle Pieces

There is confusion about Hiram. Was he a Graham or a Wood? My great grand father Lester Garfield Graham (LGG)  refers to him being from the Graham side of the family in his memoirs.  However, the more I look into various resources I am wondering if he was really a Wood. In the 1830 Middletown, Delaware, New York Census there is listed Grove Graham, Benjamin Wood, and Hiram Wood [and a Hezekiah Wood and a Andrew Graham]. It shows there are only two people in the household, Hiram and a wife. This would match with LGG's account that Hiram was older than Benjamin and that he and his wife had no children when they left New York for Illinois together.  Could Hiram have been a cousin?  According to another distant cousin, it is believed Betsey had a brother named Benjamin and she and Grove gave this name to their son - my great great Grandfather Benjamin Nelson Graham.  Nothing definite here at the moment, just putting thoughts to electronic paper...kind of like thinking out loud....way out loud on the www. Who knows, maybe brainstorming and thinking out loud will spark a memory of some sort with someone else who can help with this road block.  I'm gathering puzzle pieces. Anyone with any other pieces out there?