Grandma Jones

See if you can find your Grandma Jones (Kathryn MacKay Jones) in this picture.  She came from a family of 6 girls.  Maybe your mom or dad knows which one she is.  See if your parents can pick out her sisters, Marjorie, Florence, Ruth May, Marian (who I was named after, by the way), and Joyce.

This is Marian's wedding picture.  Can you find Grandma Jones in this one?

This is a picture of Ruth May Fox and her children.  Ruth May Fox is your great great grandma and was the General Young Women's president of the church from 1929-1937.  Do you remember I told you she also came across the plains as a pioneer?  She is sitting on a tall chair in the middle of the picture.  My grandma is Florence Marie Fox MacKay and she is the woman on the furthest right.

Wahgoosh

So I'm at the temple yesterday doing sealings of family names I've found and this card comes up.  Before he says anything, the sealer looks at the card for about 4 seconds, looks at me with a question in his eyes and I can just tell he's thinking, "What's up with this guy's name?!?"  Then he finally asks, "What is that?  A nickname or something?  Wahgoosh??"  I just smile at him and say, "I have no idea.  I just found his name on Family Search and he needs some temple work done."

Today I decide to do some searching to see if I can find any explanation for this strange name.  I run across his marriage certificate and it says he married a woman by the name of Na she wa quay.  I'm thinking, "What?  Did he have 2 wives?"  You'll notice on the temple card it says his wife is Angeline Brunette.

So I go to Family Search and look what I found!  Check out the names with the yellow arrows next to them!  Wild!  On the Minnesota 1875 census, in the column for race it has a W for Samuel John "Wagoosh" Fox which means he was white.  But his wife and 3 kids have an H in the race column.  Not sure what that stands for but if you look at the yellow arrows in the lower right corner you see it says "Ojibwe woman".  I googled that.  It's the Chippewa Tribe!  So my 2nd great grandfather's brother married a Native American woman.  Pretty cool!

My best guess is that when Samuel married into the tribe, they gave him the native name of Wahgoosh.  And his wife had an English name, Angeline, as well as her native name, Na she wa quay.  Her father was a white man it looks like and her mother was a Chippewa or Ojibwe.  I wonder what Wahgoosh means.

Pilgrims

We have an ancestor named John Moses who emigrated to Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1632.  He was a shipwright (which means a ship builder.)  I was reading about him online in a book written in 1899 by one of his descendants.  She said, "It is highly probable that John Moses did not come to New England to escape religious persecution, but rather to fill a demand for men who could build ships."  Well, THAT'S a new twist!  Also he was fined 10 shillings on two different occasions for drunkenness so the author doubts he was a strict Puritan.

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And how about this...Peter Brown is one of our ancestors and he came on the Mayflower in 1620!  Do you see his name on the Mayflower Compact?  In the picture below, Peter Brown is the 4th person from the right (not counting the child.)

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Congratulations to Travis who won the latest challenge!  He'll be eating at Arby's sometime in the near future!

Wanna Be In DAR or SAR?

Hey!  I found out we have an ancestor who fought in the Revolutionary War!  His name is Zebulon Moses and he was born in 1754 in Connecticut.  That would have made him 22 years old in 1776 when the United States won the war and declared independence.  So if you want to be a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution or Sons of the American Revolution, you can apply for membership.  :)  In order to belong to one of these groups you have to prove that you had an ancestor who fought in the American Revolutionary War.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bennington_Battlefield_State_Historic_Site#mediaviewer/File:
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I want to find out more about him.  All I know is that he fought in the Vermont Regiment and was at the Battle of Bennington.  The marker for the Bennington battlefield is in the picture above.  There's also a "Zebulon Moses Farm Complex" in Lima, New York that is on the National Register of Historic Places.  Road trip, anyone?  Wouldn't it be cool to go back and see where he lived??

Guess who won the last challenge?  It WASN'T TRAVIS!  Can you believe it?!?  It was David!  Five bucks on its way to San Antonio with David's name on it.