A Cousin Connection Leads to a Fourth-Great-Grandfather: 52 Ancestors 2021 Prompt “DNA”

DNA Results Confirm a Fourth-Great-Grandfather

Sampson Leachman: 1753-1825

            Several months ago, Ancestry sent me an email telling me there were new photo hints for Laurel Jandy Aird, my mother-in-law. To my delight, I found two college photos of Laurel that I had never seen before. I was curious about who posted them—a C. Paterson, a name I wasn’t familiar with.

            I pulled up Mr. Paterson’s public tree, and looked at his entry for Laurel Jandy. Another surprise—he had used a tag identifying her as a DNA match to himself! This was exciting and puzzling, so I sent Mr. Paterson an email thanking him for posting the photos and asking how he was related to Laurel—who was their common ancestor?

            Mr. Paterson sent a lovely response, saying he was Laurel’s fourth cousin once removed. He said their shared ancestor was Bruce’s fourth-great-grandfather Sampson Leachman, who was reputed to have arrived in Kentucky with Daniel Boone. When I examined Ancestry’s ThruLines feature, I was able to trace the relationship up from Laurel’s grandmother Cora Leachman to Sampson Leachman. This added a new generation to the tree I had been building—I’d been stuck at George Leachman, Cora’s grandfather. There had been several possible fathers for George, but now I had incontrovertible evidence that Sampson was the correct fourth-great-grandfather. DNA doesn’t lie.

            I am still investigating Sampson Leachman, but so far I have discovered that he was probably born in either Fauquier County or what is now Prince William County, Virginia, to parents Thomas Leachman and Elizabeth Leonard Sampson. He was the youngest of the five children I have identified so far. While there are several birth dates for Sampson on different trees, the most likely is 1752 or 1753.

Whether or not Sampson migrated to Virginia in the company of Daniel Boone, or whether he arrived on his own, he seems to have moved there in the 1770s. The only evidence I have found to support this claim is a letter Mr. Paterson received from another cousin which is included below. It quoted a book titled Washington County Kentucky Bicentennial History 1792-1992, which stated:

“From an old Leachman Bible we learned that he ‘Departed for the Wilderness with Daniel Boone in February 1774.’ They first stopped at Boonesboro where, according to the legend, Sampson was awarded a hunting knife for being he ‘homliest man’ in the Fort. Later, his daughter, Elizabeth, won a beauty contest and was acclaimed as the first ‘beauty queen’ of Kentucky.”

Sampson married Nancy Ann Davis, who may have been an immigrant from Scotland, or may have been born in Kentucky, depending on whose family tree you are looking at. She supposedly was born in 1755, but some Ancestry trees have her giving birth to her last child, William Gibson Leachman, in 1816 when she would have been 61 years old. This seems unlikely. As a result, I have my doubts about that 1755 birthdate. More research must be done.

Sampson and Nancy’s marriage date is also a mystery. Their first child was born in 1783, so all I know for certain is that they probably married before 1783.

Sampson likely farmed, but there are few records to confirm this. He appears in the 1810 census living in Mercer, Kentucky. The census record shows that in addition to his family, his household included two slaves.

Sampson died sometime between 1823 and 1825, probably in Mercer County or Boyle County, Kentucky. His burial location is unknown.

While DNA confirms that Sampson is Bruce’s fourth-great-grandfather, that is about all that I can say with any confidence. Records from the late 1700s and early 1800s in Kentucky are very limited. Until I find more records, I will fill in the tree with unconfirmed information that hopefully will be verified at some point in the future.

Sources:

Letter of November 26, 2001 from Bill R Peters

Washington County Kentucky Bicentennial History 1792-1992. Paducah KY. Turner Pub. Company. 1991.

James Frampton Smith: 52 Ancestors 2021 Prompt “Great”

 

James Frampton Smith: 1875-1916
Great-Uncle and a Great Man

 

            Grandma Jandy, born Lorene Edith Smith, was the youngest of her father’s twelve children. All of her eleven siblings had a different mother, Rev. Willis Smith’s first wife Margaret Benton, while Lorene was the only child of Rev. Smith’s second wife, Cora Leachman. Lorene’s oldest half-brother, James Frampton Smith, was a good man who worked hard to support his family and his church—a great example of a solid, blue-collar citizen in turn-of-the-century America.  

Rev. Willis Smith and nine of his twelve children. Frampton next to his father?

            James Frampton—usually called Frampton or J. F., was born January 18, 1875 in Kentucky. His father was a Presbyterian minister for many years in the town of Owensboro, and that was where Frampton grew up.

After leaving school, Frampton worked as a mechanic. When he turned 21 in 1896, his father purchased a plot of land, intending to build an iron foundry. According to the local newspaper, Frampton, “a young mechanic of fine experience and ability, will be in charge of the business. Both the father and son are men of vim, energy and push, and any undertaking which they back is sure to be a success.”

            Two years later, on June 8, 1898, Frampton married a local girl, Alice Thornsberry. The wedding write-up notes that Frampton was “employed at the Southern Iron Works and is an energetic and promising young man.” It appears Frampton put his iron-working skills to use for an employer rather than, or perhaps in addition to, his own blacksmithing/foundry operation. Southern Iron Works was a local company that specialized in decorative iron railings and trims as well as more practical equipment pieces.

            By the 1900 census, Frampton was working as a miller. It is unclear if this was an iron-working job title, or if he was actually working at a grain mill. In 1908, he sold the blacksmith building and land his father had bought for him back in 1896. The 1910 census shows him working as a machinist, presumably for the Iron Works, and owning his home and farm property free of a mortgage, out along Livermore Road south of Owensboro. Later newspaper articles describe him as a contractor, so he may have done quite a variety of work in the community.

            The Smith farmhouse appears to have been a popular site for entertaining friends. A couple of newspaper items in the Owensboro Messenger around 1910 describe luncheons held for the Smiths’ Sunday School students—both Frampton and Alice were active in their church and taught Sunday School.

Frampton and Alice had two daughters. Harriet Lillian Smith was born in 1901, and Daisy Smith was born in 1908.

In 1907, Frampton contracted typhoid fever, and was hospitalized for an extended period of time. He was expected to die; the newspaper noted that he was “gravely ill” and that his father had been sent for from “Indian Territory” where he had moved to found new churches.

He recovered, but perhaps that bout with typhoid left him in a weakened condition, for in 1916 the local newspaper reported that “Mr. Smith was seized with the grip but was able to be up until a week ago, when he suffered a relapse, which later developed into pneumonia, which caused his death.” He died at age forty on January 24, 1916.

The tributes Frampton’s friends and neighbors offered following his death showed how his contributions were valued in the community. The obituary noted that he had “a great many friends” and called him “an ardent worker in the church, having served as Sunday School superintendent for some time.”

The newspaper also printed the meeting minutes of Frampton’s Methodist church board after his funeral. They included some heartfelt accolades:

“That in the death of Brother Smith we have lost a man of sterling worth, pure gold, a man loved by everybody, a tactful leader of our young people and children; patient, earnest, consecrated, ready for every good word and work. We felt he would live because we could not see how we could do without him…May the high ideals which possessed the life of this faithful man lead every one of us to the same unselfish living and to the same happy home.”

The board went on to state that they knew “him to be a Christian of genuine piety and a faithful and unselfish servant of the church, doing with a glad heart that work which fell to his lot. To say we shall miss him does not tell half the truth; we depended much upon his good judgment and wise counsel; it is our feeling that in the death of Brother Smith the whole church of suffered such a severe loss that we shall not very soon recover from it.”

These amazing tributes show that Frampton was a great man. He may not have been wealthy or powerful—our society’s usual standards of “greatness”, but his faith, decency and his commitment to his community were worthy of honor and respect.

Frampton was buried in the Rosehill Elmwood Cemetery in Owensboro. His wife and daughters continued to live in Owensboro, moving into town after selling the farm property. Both daughters married, but Alice never remarried.

Sources:

Owensboro KY Messenger Inquirer: Jan. 24, 1916; Oct 11, 1907; June 7, 1898; June 10, 1898; March 19, 1896; Sep 15, 1894. Newspapers.com.

Sanborn Fire Insurance Map of Owensboro, from Library of Congress website.

                                                                                                                                                

Lorene’s Vintage Music: 52 Ancestors 2021 “Music”

 

Songs from Yesteryear: A Trove of Vintage Music

Lorene Smith Jandy: 1903-1994
George Jandejsek: 1894-1931

 

            Following Laurel Aird’s death, family members were sorting items she had stored in her attic in her Silver Spring home. One box contained vintage sheet music from the First World War era and the 1920s and 1930s. The music was arranged for piano and voice—most of the pieces were popular songs from the early twentieth century rather than classical pieces. Laurel’s mother, Lorene Smith Jandy, had been the pianist who built up the collection, and her signature could be found on the cover sheet of many of the pieces.

Lorene--around age 20

What really caught our attention were the full-color illustrations on the cover sheets of many of the pieces. They were absolutely delightful: perfect examples of World War I and Art Deco illustration styles. We started sorting the pile, pulling out all the most charming illustrations. No one in the family played piano, so no one was really interested in the music. Most of it was going to be tossed. But we felt much of the illustrated vintage sheet music should be preserved for future generations. It wasn’t valuable in the monetary sense, but it had value to us as a window into the era that shaped Lorene and her husband Edward Jandy.

            When I examined the sheet music more closely, I noticed two different stamps on some of the top sheets, and these stamps have interesting stories to tell us about two different periods of Lorene’s life.

            The first stamp reads “Hamby’s Music Shop: Mail Orders and Specialty. Dawson Springs, KY”. This stamp or a couple variations, can be found on much of the older, World War I-era music. Lorene Smith was born on April 13, 1903 in Oklahoma, the daughter of an itinerant minister. Rev. Willis Smith started his ministry career in Kentucky, but after his second marriage to Cora Leachman, he decided to move to the frontier lands of Oklahoma and then on to New Mexico to start new churches. At some point after 1910, he returned to Kentucky, taking up the ministry of a Dawson Springs church. Lorene was probably about ten years old when they moved to Kentucky, and spent the rest of her childhood in Dawson Springs. She would have been a young teen during World War I, which lasted from 1914-1918.

            Obviously she enjoyed playing the piano, and was drawn to the patriotic music being produced during the war years. Perhaps she was stirred by the romantic paintings adorning the music, like the sweet-faced mother and child wrapped in the flag illustrating “Let’s Keep the Glow in Old Glory and the Free in Freedom Too”.

            Or perhaps she ached for the children of soldiers, like the little girl waving goodbye to her soldier father on the cover of “His Buttons are Marked ‘U.S’”. Her name is penciled at the top of the sheet music: L. Smith. I wonder if she sang the words as well as played the accompaniment. Did the family sing together? Did her school friends join her to sing patriotic songs? Did the family have a piano at home, or did she go to her father’s church to practice?

            I have not been able to find any information on Hamby’s Music Store. The Hamby family was quite prominent in Dawson Springs. The town boasted a spa due to the mineral wells that ran beneath the community, and the Hamby family had discovered the original wells, and built the first hotel to take advantage of the growing tourist trade. They also ran stores and various other businesses in the community, so it is not surprising that by the World War I era, they also ran a music store.

            As for the second stamp I discovered, it came from a different point in Lorene’s life. Lorene attended Blackburn College in Carlinville, Illinois, a small Presbyterian College (her father was a Presbyterian minister). She met Edward Jandesek at Blackburn and they fell in love. Lorene’s father married them in Dawson Springs in August, 1925.

 Edward was from Chicago and had family there, including a brother, George. Ed was the youngest of eight children, and George was the brother closest in age to him, being about four years older. After the older Jandesek siblings left home, the two youngest brothers cared for their widowed mother Emily, before Ed went off to college and both men married. Due to their long years living together, the two brothers were close.

George Jandesek was born October 23, 1894 to Emanuel and Emily Jandesek in Chicago. George served in World War I, assigned to Company D of the 132^nd Infantry. He was reported wounded on December 19, 1918, but survived, returning home to a career in the printing industry as a pressman.

However, George apparently had what we now call a “side hustle”—a second job that made use of his love of music. Several pieces of sheet music from Lorene’s collection bear the stamp “George Jandesek, Pianist for All Occasions”, followed by the address 4043 West 21^st Place, Chicago, and a contact phone number: “Tel. Lawndale 7182”. Obviously George hired out as a pianist in his neighborhood. The West 21^st St. address is near the suburb of Cicero, further west and further upwards in class than the Pilsen neighborhood where the family had previously lived in several different rentals for fifteen or so years around the 1910 and 1920 censuses. I therefore hypothesize the pianist business was a post-war venture.

The two pieces of sheet music shown here were both copyrighted around 1920, so shortly after World War I. It appears George specialized in playing popular songs—the type that people would enjoy singing along to as he played. Most of the pieces bearing his stamp were ballads or more swing-style pieces.

George married Iona Louise Jones on September 1, 1923. By 1930, the couple had moved to a home in the suburb of Brookfield, Illinois, even further west than Cicero, and once again a little higher class. He was still working as a typesetter for a printing company, and his mother Emily was still living with him.

Tragically, George died just a year later, on July 19, 1931. George was only 36 years old. He and Iona had no children. There is no record of the cause of death. Presumably George’s brother Ed kept some of George’s sheet music as a keepsake following George’s death. Lorene must have gotten to know George and Iona following her marriage to Ed in 1925. She probably wanted to keep the memory of her brother-in-law alive by playing his music. 

I wish we had more information about George—especially a photo or two. He sounds like he was an interesting man.