The "Best" Family

In the mid 1990's I remember doing my very first internet search. The internet at that time was not the huge engine of information that it is today. I came across a Civil War roster of names, and decided to try looking there for the last name Best. Much to my surprise hundreds of names came up. Not knowing a first name for an ancestor that might have been in the Civil War left me feeling pretty overwhelmed, but one thing I did come away with was that most of these men were listed as Colored. This then led me to the only conclusion possible, the Best's were slave owners. This was not at all welcome news to my father, who had come to identify so strongly with this Native American in the photograph. Because my father was an ex-hippie, a musician, a surfer, a pacifist, and a nature lover, being a slave owner's great great grandson was not a pleasant idea to wrap his head around.

 
It wasn't until I decided to accept the genealogical torch passed on to me by my late maternal grandmother, that I thought why not start with my dad's family first; the one family with the least amount of information. I gave myself a goal of Father's Day the following year to present to him his family history. So the journey began.

My father's parents divorced in the early 1960's. His father remarried in 1966 then died the following year. He was only 47. My father and his brother do not have great memories of him, and this side of the family had always been a huge mystery to everyone. They knew their grandfather, but that was the extent of the history. There were rumors of Freemasonry in their lineage, but no one was a member in their immediate family. My father had once seen an old sepia photograph of a Native American man that bore an uncanny resemblance to himself, and decided he must have Native American blood. He and his brother had also thought that perhaps the name "Best" had originated in Germany spelled Besste. Pretty random things to have as your starting point for genealogical research.

With the Family Tree Maker on Ancestry.com I was able to begin the process by starting with the first name I knew... myself. I added my father's information, and his father's name, and his grandfather's name. I didn't know any birth dates or death dates at that time. It was during the Free Trial period of Ancestry.com, and when the trial ended I was still able to access other people's family trees for clues (this is now only available with a subscription). Finding "cousins" who had also entered data into the Family Tree Maker was like finding chocolate filled Easter eggs.

The Christmas presents were the little green oak leaf that would pop up indicating new information had been linked to my tree. I made my way back through history quite quickly, because there is a lot of historical documentation of the Best's leading back to the mid 1600's and Tobacco Plantations in Jamestown, Virginia.

First Lighthouse in Virginia

When I had reached the first ancestor to sail over, it turns out it was an Englishman, not a German, and I discovered a long fascinating history in England as well.


A link to the full Best Family narrative:
http://ancestraltides.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_25.html
A link to the Gardner Family narrative:
http://ancestraltides.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_3.html

A link to the Grimmond / Duncan Family narrative:

 http://ancestraltides.blogspot.com/p/the-grimmond-duncan-family-narrative.html

Pugsley Family Tales

Before my maternal Grandmother passed away in 2010 she had been doing some research into her ex-husband's family tree. She had already spent decades of research into her own family, and wanted to do this for my mother and myself.


His name was Tom Pugsley. It seemed that neither he nor his brother, Joe, knew much about their heritage other than what had been passed down word of mouth from their father, Samuel. So my Grandmother interviewed Tom and his brother to try to glean as much information from them as she could, as all three were getting up there in age.

To her first inquiry, Joe responded with:

"My dad was Irish/Welsh Catholic, my mother pure Irish Catholic, Katherine Flynn. Grandfather Pugsley was a good Welshman. I know my dad had relatives (generations back) in Westchester County and a "shirttail" relative who owned a duck farm in Upper New York State. We checked it out on one of our family trips to the east (1939 or 1940) when N.Y. World's Fair was showing. My dad had two sisters that I know of... Aunt Anna Peloso, in the Bronx I think... or maybe it was Aunt Emma?"

Tom responded with:

“My father, Samuel, said his people in Wales were weavers, wool wrights and farmers. Grandfather Pugsley {Samuel’s father} may have made Carriages or Carriage Wheels. The family raised ducks on Long Island - well known for their fine quality of ducks. Grandfather Pugsley was poor, but the "family" owned a lot of land. Grandmother Kate {Katherine Flynn} was quite elderly when we visited her in 1939 or 1940 (World's Fair). She lived in the Bronx at that time, and she was small and determined. She had outlived 2 husbands, maybe 3.”

Neither Tom nor Joe knew their Grandfather Pugsley's first name. They thought maybe Samuel, or George?

Tom had written me a letter in July of 1991, a few months after the birth of my first son. In this letter he wrote:

“Now that you are a mother, perhaps some background from the Pugsley family would be of interest? The first Pugsley in America was an ex-officer in King George’s Army; given land north of New York City by the King about 1765; a country squire. My grandfather was a loner; very athletic; climbed church steeples for exercise, and did daring things. He would get “moody” and sail off on his sail boat for long periods. He was said to have been quite the drinker (wasn’t everyone in those days?). My father was aristocratic, Victorian, of good intelligence, and self-educated. He went from a fisherman (as a boy), to top Salesman with American Stove Co. (Magic Chef). My mother (Margaret Tuohey) was as Irish as Paddy's Pig."

My Grandmother wasn't used to using the internet; she worked the “old school” way with her genealogical investigation: writing letters of request for Census Data, visiting historical societies, ordering historical books, and finding old maps of the areas she was studying.

With these clues from Tom and Joe she was left with combing her way through copies of Census data based on only the proximity to where she thought Grandfather Pugsley may have lived and a combination of possible family names. This was no easy task, and almost impossible to verify without an actual first name or birth date.

In 2012 I decided to pick up where she had left off. I took the information that she had already compiled and started entering all the data into Ancestory.com’s Family Tree maker. This has proven to be an invaluable resource, as today most of these historical books, legal documents, census, wills, and gravestone inscriptions have been digitized. I have been able to cross reference the information she found, and dig deeper than she was able to. Happily I answered many of her questions, filled in the empty pages, and can now say I am 90% satisfied that I’ve unraveled the Pugsley puzzle.

The other 10% is finding the Counties and Parishes of my Irish ancestors. If there is anyone reading this that can assist me with Ireland... please, help!

Of course, I won’t be 100% satisfied, as very important bits of the puzzle are still missing due to: the lack of proper documentation of births, deaths, and marriages during the early settling of America; the city government buildings being burnt down during the civil war; and, the fire of 1921 destroying the 1890 US Federal Census housed in the Commerce Building in Washington, D.C. Historians have been going to great lengths to find other sources of information to fill in these missing pieces of time (City Directories), but sadly, some things are just lost. There will not be an answer to these questions, and that is hard to accept when you get to that dead end.

When I was entering the data into our family tree, I started with Tom, and worked my way back in time from there. At first I didn’t get very far, because that black hole of missing information of the mid-to-late 1800’s put up a road block.

I was able to purchase a couple existing documents (birth and death certificates) from the New York Archives, which helped, but even with that, I eventually was forced to give up. I had to start a new tactic of going back to the beginning of America’s history, with the first Pugsley on historic record (just as Grandma Jean had attempted) and hope that would help. The information I found, however, was a messy bramble of twisted branches.

Each generation of Pugsley men named their children the same, as did their brothers. So that by the third generation it seemed an insurmountable task of deciphering sibling from cousin from brother from father. A lot of the historical accounts have proven to be inaccurate due to this very confusion. The only way I could find to get around this was following the family branch of each wife. Thankfully, during the 1700-1800’s, the Pugsley men married "well" and those affluent families have been better documented than our own.

Before I was able to share with my Grandfather Tom the information I had found, he passed away July of 2013. I was not able to truly untangle his family tree until December of 2015, and that was just the American history.

As far as the “Pugsley Tale” of being Welsh, the Pugsley's have been in America since the mid 1600's, coming over from Devon, England. In Devon their history goes back hundreds of years, with nary a Welshman to be found. So I am completely perplexed as to how that family story even got started.

Click here for full family narrative: http://ancestraltides.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_6.html






Pugsley Farm in Warkleigh, Devon

Origin of the Pugsley surname: It is believed that it is from a now "lost" village or hamlet believed to have been situated in the Barnstaple area. This belief is because of the great quantity of early recordings of the name in local parish registers. There is a Pugsley Farm in Warkleigh, Devon still in use today. John Pugsley was the name of three of the early mayors—namely, in 1355, 1468, and 1474. The name occurs in the annals of the town for the 17th century. Barnstaple is still the home of the name, although some fifteen generations have passed away since the stirring days of Cressy and Poictiers, when John Pugsley was mayor.

Don't think! Just Write!

I started and stopped this post about 6 times yesterday. I am not quite sure what direction to take this blogging thing. Do I start with what I came here to do, write about my ancestral journey? Do I start with how I began my family tree on Ancestory.com, or how I utilized Familysearch.org to find information for free when I couldn't afford the subscription fees to the other site? Do I tell stories of each mystery, how I solved them, and what I did to get the information? For some reason I feel that those who would be inclined to read this (the genealogically minded) may have already "been there, done that". They perhaps, like me, are only searching other genealogical blogs and websites trying to find a cousin with information they need in their quest to fill in all the empty leaves of their ever expanding family tree.
I question why I am here writing this at all, other than if I don't just start writing, I never will. I need to purge from the confines of the yellowing paper with manual typewritten words and white out, all the information that my grandmother spent decades of her life gathering.  I need to share what I have spent the last 4 years discovering on my own, not related to HER direct ancestors. There needs to be a place where I can put my virtual hand up in the air and get a high five from others like me, when we have that "A HA!" moment.


It really does feel like I am being Sherlock Holmes at times, allthough I am not as quick to a solution as he is. It takes me a while to solve the puzzles, maybe I am more like Inspector Clouseau in the Pink Panther, often clueless. After all, I did have to teach myself everything on how to be an online genealogist. My grandmother was very methodical and old school in her research techniques, and with snail mail it is no wonder it took her decades to gather as much information as she had. She took her time, read a lot, and learned as she went along. But I have the internet, so it should be easy, right? Well yes, I must say, we've come a LONG LONG way in this sharing information thing, but when you don't know what you are searching for exactly, it makes finding it that more difficult. So round and round I go, exhausting every path I can think of going on until I hit enough dead ends. At that point, I throw my hands up and surrender in frustration, pour a glass of wine, then move on to something else for a while.

Photo by: Daniela Nobili

When I took it upon myself to start entering my grandmother’s research into a digital format, and creating a family tree, it amazed me how much information she had right. Time and time again I was able to find documentation to confirm her conclusions, and more often than not I found the missing data or answers to her hand scribbled question marks, and the "circa" or "about" when it came to birth and death dates were finalized. It was moments like those that I wish we had started this internet project together long before her passing. I tell myself she is with me, watching my progress, and stimulating the synapses in my brain while I am sleeping telling me where to search next. When I am really deep into the research, I do dream about it, unconsciously trying to piece together the puzzle of the day.

The surrendering in frustration and moving on is also a helpful technique. For some reason when I do come back, I always find something new even when treading over old ground. Perhaps it was always there, but with fresh eyes I see the information differently, or it connects in a new way and I follow a path not known of before. Filling in a name where previously it said "unknown" is such a gratifying feeling.

The writer that used to live inside me had always wanted to take a family narrative and create a historical fiction novel; maybe a murder mystery or a ghost story? I still feel like some purging needs to happen though. Too much information... too many family members... just “too much” spinning around my head to buckle down and focus on one thing.

So I needed to remind myself of rule number one in creative writing: 

 Don't think!

Where do I even begin?

   

Grandma Jean as a baby

My maternal grandmother, Jean, was born in Eagle Rock, Los Angeles in the year of 1926. After her first marriage in 1947, she moved around a lot, because my grandfather was a teacher, and they had to go where the work was. Which explains how her son, Michael, was born in Eugene, Oregon, but a year later my mom was born in Berkeley, California. By the time I was 2 years old, "Grandma Jean" had remarried and was moving around a lot again, due to her new husband working in Construction.

She would travel to visit me during holidays and birthdays. It was a way for me to spend time with my mother as well, after my parents divorced and my father had custody. 

My memories of my grandmother are fond ones. 

In the summer around my mom and I's birthdays, we would visit this place in Los Gatos, CA, called Vesona Park.  It had a lake, a river that ran through the park, a giant playground, and while we were eating our picnic I could feed the geese. There was also a miniature train that traveled through part of the park. It was always a great place to meet up.

During Christmas, if we didn't travel to her house for a visit, she would swoop into town in her faux wood paneled Station Wagon, with black garbage bags filled to the brim with presents. She believed that quantity was always better than quality. I think she just liked to wrap presents. So what you unwrapped was always a mystery, I mean seriously some really random things, but she did make sure that at least one or two of the gifts were from your wish list. My list was always simple, coloring pens and paper. A brand new set of colored ink pens in every color and hue was the BEST thing in the world to me. One year she agreed to pay for my piano lessons as a birthday gift. That had a profound affect on me, for I was able to learn to read sheet music, sing along to songs I could play, and it set me up great for my later years in Choir and being a singer/songwriter. She gave me my first camera, an automatic. The kind of camera that was easy for a novice, and all you had to do was make sure you put the film cartridge in correctly. It did the rest. Had it not been for her taking pictures of me during our visits, I might not have anything to remember of my childhood. Every couple years after that, I would get the next upgrade in automatic camera, and unofficially became my family's photographer.
            She also gave me my first complete sewing kit, cross-stitch patterns, and crochet needles and yarn. It was always fun to figure out how to use them and to see what I could make, but the usual default was Barbie clothing. She was an avid clothes maker herself, she made all her own clothes, but she gave up making me clothes when I became a "tween". Thank goodness for no more polyester bell bottom pants. Thick Polyester seemed to be the perfect fabric to her, perhaps because it hung nicely and didn't need ironing? I am not quite sure.
            I remember I was 10 when I took an airplane all by myself to spend my first summer with her alone. She had a swimming pool, AND she was living in San Diego. There was always some place for us to go during the day. The ocean was warm, and the beaches were inviting. We could go to the Zoo, the Wild Animal Park, or to Sea World. In the evenings we would drink diet RC Cola, eat Cheese-Its and spend hours playing Scrabble or Gin Rummy. She loved everything Hawaii related, so I learned to play on her Ukulele. She said San Diego reminded her of Hawaii. I loved it there so much I went to college at San Diego State University as a Comparative Literature major, and my first job was working the summer at Sea World next to the Dolphin Show.
          When we had down time, during our visits, she would share her office sanctuary with me, which was half sewing room and half genealogical library.  I was regaled with the wonderful adventures of our ancestors who came from exotic places, made perilous voyages across a big ocean, and then lived harsh lives as America's earliest pioneers. Mostly I was interested in the "exotic places" they came from, because there were Castles, and possibly leprechauns.  I was young, but the writing bug was starting to creep in on me.
           This summer visit became a ritual all the way through my teenage years (the mid 80's). Each summer, I would read at least a dozen books, mostly of the murder mystery variety. I loved Agatha Christie, Nancy Drew, and Stephen King. I had also discovered The Hobbit, and the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. If we didn't stay in San Diego we would road trip up through Yosemite, where she would tell me about her teen years as a camp counselor, which sounded exactly like the set up for Dirty Dancing, and then we would settle in at Lake Tahoe for a week of fun and reading. That faux wood paneled Station Wagon only played 8-track tapes, by the way. Her favorites were Wayne Newton, Barbara Streisand, Big Band music of the World War II era, and groups like the Andrews' Sisters. The journey from San Diego to Lake Tahoe, with only that to listen to, made for a long ride. But of course, I ended up learning each song and sang along with enthusiasm.
            As I grew older, and she felt I was responsible enough to care for them, she began to send me binders full of her genealogical findings. She wrote narratives about the families based on her research, to make it easier to understand, and filled out each family tree by hand on large scrolls. All her research was done by going to libraries, traveling to Mormon Churches that had genealogical data, and writing (via snail mail) to multiple State and County Departments in regards to Census Data, Birth Certificates, Death Certificates, Probates, Property Sales and Land Transfers; anything historically relevant to help her meander her way around the ever looming questions and perpetual dead ends. It was decades worth of work.
            An outsider might look in and wonder why does a woman spend all her time doing this? What does she have to gain? Well, her husband worked, and aside from the occasional secretarial work she did to assist him, she needed a hobby. She loved to garden, that was an ongoing pass time of hers, and she always needed to live where there was sunshine most the year.  I didn't know this at the time, but she suffered from depression, and she did say once that she had to take a "happy" pill each day. I get it now, because I too suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder. I didn't have to wonder about her inspiration though, I saw the wonderful places her imagination could wander to as each clue led to the unraveling of a family mystery. It was detective work. It was addictive. It was fulfilling.
          The further and further she would go back in time, the more fascinating the stories became, and the fact that these characters were our family, well that made it even cooler!  It made me feel I belonged to something larger than just my mother and father, and all the dysfunctional relationships circling around me. Time with her also offered me a safe warm blanket of stability; for I knew she was always there for me.
            When I grew older, had children of my own, and moved around, she understood. It saddened her that we didn't have that time together anymore, but through genealogy she continued to send me more research and more stories for us to share - always with the thought, that someday I would continue where she left off. I had known for a long while that I wanted to take these narratives and use them as inspiration to write a novel of some sort. She thought that was a great idea.
            In April of 2010 she passed away of Congenital Heart Failure. In her office sanctuary a large box had been set aside with my name on it. In it was even more research, but it turns out this was her first husband's family information on behalf of my mother. I inherited this quest as well. 

A couple years later, I finally sat down and started trying to figure out how to digitize all this family information for posterity. My first thought: where do I even begin? So I started with her.

http://trees.ancestry.com/tree/53599200/family