Letter From Philip Greeley 1941

Letter from Phillip Greeley MD
to Frances Maude Greeley Crabb

Photocopy kept by my mother-in-law

Jan 19, 1941

517 Columbia Drive
Davis Island
Tampa Florida

Dear Niece,

I was very much please to get letter in spite of the fact that traveled a lot it did not seem to detract from its value.  We were at Ocean Grove a few week and decided to go to Ocean City about ten miles below Atlantic City.  I went to P.O. before left my forwarding address and for a few weeks we got our mail all right and then the little mail that came by way of Ocean City began to get into the dead letter office.  Naturally I have a lot of mail from Portsmouth N.H. and always keep that office informed of my whereabouts and they never have failed to do their duty by me yet so if anyone is not sure of my location I usually tell them to address me at Portsmouth N.H.

I guess I feel about the same [unknown word] be the new deal as you do.  I hard know what I am.  If I can find the name of an intelligent man on the ticket he might get my vote whether he belongs to a party or not. There are some good men in office I am thankful to [unknown] and plenty that are too cheap to mention.

Maine and Vermont are the only States that are still on the gold standard.  You might mention to your children that their Grand-father was born in Maine.

I met a man who had been to Wash. and western Canada.  I said I had relatives in Wash.  He learned what place and at once was enthusiastic.  “I went there to an apple festival once” said he “and it is the great apple county in the world”.  I think your father made no mistake when he picked out that county in which to settle.  There seems to be no ideal place in the U.S.A. to live the whole but I have often wondered if in Wash., Oregon, and Vancouver Canada did not come the nearest to it.  Fruit and vegetables are fast coming to the front as food and people are just beginning to find out there value as life savers and health promoters.  Improvement in the process of canning had helped as you know. 

I think I shall have to confine my writing to your fathers ancestors until I get more data on the Bartlett and Walls .On mother’s side the Cunninghams, Browns, and Nickersons are in the picture.  Sometime the latter part of the 18^th century John Cunningham went from Edgartown Martha’s Vinyard to Cape Cod and married the daughter of Slathiel Nickerson.

Two sons were all that resulted from this marriage.  William who lived in Belfast Maine.  The two brothers married sisters.  I think they were Scotch and belonged to that gang that England induced to go to Northern Ireland and made great promises for their prosperity and never kept them.  It is said that they stayed in Ireland long enough to learn the art of making corn liquer otherwise known  as moonshine or kill me quick.  It was very populare during prohibition days.  They settled in the Appalation system which extends from Canada to Fla.

In northern states a law was passed fifty years ago more or less obliging them to send their children to school.  Consequently the mountains are about uninhabited except for people who go there to visit during the summer.  This applies to Maine, NH, Vermont, Mass, Conn, NY, NJ, and part of Penn. I think they have no such law (if they do they don’t enforce) in Maryland, Vir, W. Vir., the Carolinas, Knetucky, Tennessee, and Georgia.  There is a school in Berea Kentucky for Mountaineers.  Supported by northern Money.  The president is brohter to the president of Chicago University who a few years ago was in the lime light.

The other son of John Cunningham was James who was you great grandfather. His home was in Belfast Maine.  [unknown] he reached the age of 10 yr when he went to sea with his mother’s brother, a Nickerson of course.  I have been told that it is an abbreviation for son of old nick. Nixon is an abbreviation for Nickerson.

Aforesaid James went around the world twice before he was 12 and continued to sail the seven seas till his death aged 40.  When he was 18 an uncle fitted out a schooner for him after which time he was Capt. Cunningham.  When about 40 he made a trip to Havana Cuba where he contracted yellow fever recovered started for N.Y. had a relapse died buried at sea.

This was near 1840.  As near as can size him up he was very decent man.  No he was “hard boiled” but if he was a pirate or shipped slaves or shanghaied his crew if he had done these things is come afters would have had happy time bragging about him.  As it was all they could say was that any man who had ever sailed with him once was delighted to go again if they got the chance.  We have no record that he was ever wrecked.

I am sure this will be all you will care translate for a while.  The psot office in Ocean Grove Is think was a little careless.  The above address will be my abode for the next three months.

Your Uncle Phillip

Image: mikebaird via photopin cc

Letter from Philip H. Greeley 1937

Maude about 18 years old

Letter from Philip H. Greeley MD
to Frances Maude Greeley Crabb
Owned by my mother-in-law

December 13, 1937

Dear Niece,

A little late to be thanking you for the picture you sent me of yourself nearly a year ago.  The fact is it came while I was in Florida and did not happen to be forwarded.  I have just gotten my eye on it.  Your Aunt Nina wrote me about it and that you were very fine looking and that she had send the picture to me.  Your smile is like you mother’s.   I think you must a much lighter complexion than she had.  She was quite dark with large features and as you may realize from her picture was a beautiful woman.  I was about seven years old when she came into our family.  She always had interesting gifts for my sister and I when she came to the house and knew how to interest children.  I expect you may know all this but I am just going on as I have started for a bit.  She was a graduate of Farmington (ME) Normal School, Teachers College you call it in the west I expect, and was a very successful teacher.  Farmington ME is a small town in the western far of ME in the foot hills of the white mountains of NH.  I have often thought how much your mother must have enjoyed the beautiful scenery in and around this old ME town.  I was through there about four years ago in October, had supper there a little before dark.  All the buildings looked clean and well cared for with certain dignity is apt to go well with a NE college town. Building mostly white if not brick well kept lawns and scrubbery.  When I was between the ages of 6 and 10 I used to go to your grandfather Bartlett’s and have a first rate time on the farm with him.  He was always very kind to me and if I annoyed him he not let on to me but what I was a great help.  He had a big newfound dog that I was very found of playing in his company in the fields.  Your grandfather has a wide orchard too that attracted my attention.  He had a great variety of apples that I have never seen elsewhere.  The Bartlett family were a strong NE race that were English stock and among the early settlers.  One was once governor of NH many of the them have information [unknown] like chaplain Bartlett of the Pearry polar expedition.  I have in my pocket a snap shot of son Henry a boy who was working for me and myself taken on the sidewalk in Hot Springs Ark. Two years ago.  I hope you will not feel offended to receive shuch a picture of two, hatless and discheveld relatives.  The only neat looking one being the cork.  With best wishes to you and your family for a metty xmas and happy new year.

Philip

Letter from Julia Wall Bartlett 1906

Lake Swan, Swanville, Maine

Letter From Julia A. Wall Bartlett to Frances Maude Greeley Crabb
Photcopy of letter owned by my mother-in-law

Swanville Apr 1906

My dearest granddaughter,

I will write a little and you how pleased I am to hear from you and your Husband and little ones and that you are all well we are all well as usual.   O how I do want to see you but I can never expect to as I am to old to ever thinking of going west but if I was younger I should go to see you very soon.  But you know I am almost 85 years old I go out very little in cold weather but our very thankful that I am able to take care of myself.  Most off Charlie uncle Rufus’s oldest boy is not at home he had been studying music for the past 1 year.  He plays cornet and has learned [unknown words] and other musical instruments and he is at work in a telephone office and collector for the company.  Do you not think he has business enough to keep him busy be belongs to the Belfast band.  He say he likes well he tend the telephone at night so he has lots of time daytime to practice music but cannot come home very often so I do not see him very often.  I miss him very much at home.  He is a dear good boy to me and has the manner of being very good young man and I pray to God he may always be good and do right.  He was 21 last fall he does not like farming.  People call him a fine player on the cornet.  John’s at home with us working on the farm with his father but he is full of music.  He is taking music lessons.  They take the music talent from their mother.  She was and her family were followers of music.  Johnie is a good and a very sweet boy his father thinks so much of both boys.  There step mother never had any children she thinks a great deal of the boys, and has always been good to them and they are good to her.  The boys mother loved you very dearly.  She helped me take care of you the last year you were with me.  You were a very good child we all loved you.  So well it was.  O so very hard to have you taken so far from us.  You were so much like your dear mother it almost seem sometimes that time had turned back again years when she was a child again in my arms.  I often think about you and your little children and have they [unknown] will be spared to your end that you will live to see them grow up and that you husband will live.  I am very lonely sometimes.  I think of all my brothers and sisters.  They are all gone.  One brother only left there were 10 of us.  5 girls and 5 boys.  9 of us lived to have families of our own.  Do you wonder that I get lonely sometimes.  I have seen many sorrows and many joys I think God is very good to me.  I have many dear friends and a home Rufus and his family are very good to me.  I often think if grandpa Bartlett could have lived and been well he and I would have come west to live.  I do not know as you can read half of this letter.  Please excuse all blunders and write often as you can for I am so pleased to hear from you.  Uncle Rufus sends love to you so do John and his step mother.  Charlie’s not home.  My love and best wishes to you and your husband and children.

From Grandma Bartlett

Swanville Box 22

*Image: http://www.bobfenton.com/swan.lake.fall.maine.3.htm

Adventures at the Archives FTF Post is up!

My next Family Tree Firsts post is up, and you can read all about it here.

It was the most incredible experience, and I had the best time.  Yes, I have always found being locked in a room with a stack of dusty papers and books a grand adventure.  Its true, I do.  You should have seen me wandering around Europe looking at museums, castles, and historic sites.  My husband thought he was going to lose me at the V&A once. He did almost lose me in Salzberg, Austria when I was on a quest to find Paracelsus's Tomb.

Now I have gotten off topic again...easy to do.

I have over a thousand images that I am going through.  Yes, a lot of images.  One thing I have been taught about doing research (from my mother, my mother-in-law, my husband,historian friends, and my college mentors) is that you copy everything.  Absolutely everything.  Never leave a page un-copied, and never just copy part of the page.  You never know when you will need information from another section of the document, or that date stamp on the back as proof of when it was created.  All records are important, you just may not know it right then.

In a past post I talked about preparing for my research, and then my experience at the archives.  Over the next few weeks I hope you all enjoy my tales of what I have found.  I have records on the following people to look through:

Anna Combs, widow of Charles Combs (the senior), War of 1812 Pension File
Theresa Arvin, widow of Henry Arvin, War of 1812 Pension File
Henry Arvin Land File
Polly and Nettie Cody, widow and minor of Button Cody, Civil War Pension File
Mary and William Combs, widow and minor of Charles "boy" Combs, Civil War Pension File
Harry Coad aka Henry Thompson Civil War Pension File
Lemuel Kelley, father of Lemuel Kelley, Civil War Pension File
Julia Bartlett, widow of William Bartlett, Civil War Pension File

Wish me good digging!

Greeley / Bartlett Family

Here is my reasoning on how I pieced together who Fannie Greeley’s parents were by eliminating all other known possibilities.  So we can put it into perspective she is my husband’s great grandmother, who was born in Maine in 1855 and Died in Washington DC in 1882.

From the letter that Grandmother Bartlett wrote to Frances Maude Greeley (Fannie’s daughter) she states she was almost 85 in April 1906.  That gave me a rough birth year of 1821.  There were 2 families that had Fannie as a child in the same area of Maine within 2 years of each other.  I was able to rule out the other family as the mother’s birth year didn’t match up and that other Fannie did not get married until later in life and stayed in Maine from what I can tell.

Frances Lydia Bartlett (1860 Census) was born in Maine to William and Julia Bartlett in 1855.  They lived in several towns in Waldo County.  She had an older brother Rufus who was born in 1848.  William died between the 1880 and 1900 census (still looking up more info) and Julia died 9 Mar 1915 in Swanville Maine while living with her son and his wife (have Julia’s death certificate). 

From the death certificate I also now know that her parents were names John and Lucy.  John was born in Maine, but she gave various places for her mother’s birth on census and death records (Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine) so I am not sure on her yet.  I found a record for William Bartlett from the Disable veterans national home.  It said he was in the Maine infantry and was wounded in the civil war with multiple gunshot wounds to the leg.  He was discharged from there in June 1879, with his closest relative listed as “Mrs. Julia A Bartlett, residence: Washington DC.” 

A guess at Fannie’s marriage date to Charles, or Chaz, is around 1879.  Phillip C Greeley was born in DC in 1879 and Frances Maude in 1882.

Also from the 1880 Census it has Charles, Fannie, and Phillip living at the reform school where he is the assistant Superintendent. “Reform School of the Dist. Columbia, Bladensburgh Rd.”  Bladensburg is just over the state line into Maryland, and Bladensburg Road starts there and travels west into DC through NE Washington where it becomes US-1 Alt.   The picture Shown is the reform school!

On the 1880 Census for DC I found:
CH Greeley:  26, Apt Sup, Born Maine, father born Maine, mother born Maine
Fannie C:  25, Matron, born Maine, father born Maine, mother born Maine
Phillip:  1, Boarder, born DC, father born Maine, mother born Maine

Then I found Charles and his parents/siblings on the 1860 and 1870 Swanville Maine censuses.  His parents were Phillip and Eliza. 

Richard Bartlett (4^th great grandfather to Frances Lydia Bartlett) was one of the first settlers of Newbury Massachusetts.  There is an image of the plaque at Newbury with the listing of the settlers in several places online.  It is important that when you go out searching for him that you get the right Bartlett line.  There are 3 New England Bartlett trees and they share names back and forth.

 *Image from Library of Congress Brady-Handy Collection