Wrapping up the Cullins

Is a genealogy ever finished, well no – there is always more to discover. I’ve had the feeling, though at this point in my life it is good to do some ‘wrapping-up’ of the family lines. It wasn’t difficult to decide which line was first as these people (in a ‘6^th Sense’ way) have tugged at me and called to me for years. And, in a more down to earth way – be it an email from a distant cousin, or a little tidbit in an old faded newspaper the Cullins have been persistent.

It hasn’t been an easy journey. It has been 64 years since I first learned of my Great Grandmother Hannah Cullins Shaffer. No one talked about her after she died of cancer at the age of 55 in 1921. My grandfather wouldn’t mention his mother. My grandmother tried to get him to open up but he stayed as closed as a threatened clam – which makes one think that there were unhappy memories. Grandma hinted at that, but I can only speculate. Then Hannah’s mother, Amanda Cordray Cullins, I was told came from a tragic family living under a dark cloud, including a house fire where everything was lost. 

Dorcas Cullins, Hannah's sister

The Cullins and Cordray families were from Ohio, but Amanda was a puzzle. I was pretty sure Amanda came from Muskingum County, which was her husband’s birthplace, but to which Cordray family did she belong? She fell through the cracks of the 1850 census where she should have been named. She wasn’t yet married to William C. Cullins and she wasn’t listed with any Cordray family. She was about 16 and my guess is that she hired out to another farm as a mother’s helper and wasn’t counted with them.

To move on with the line I had two possibilities – either Amanda was the daughter of George Washington Cordray or his brother Andrew. At first I thought it was George and put that option on my tree, however that was a mistake and misleading to others who might have copied my work as I still had no proof that Amanda was George’s daughter. I kept looking and years down the road I found that ‘one little thing’ that confirmed her father to be Andrew and not George.

That one little thing? It was one of those little gossipy news items in a Fayette County, Iowanewspaper that told us that ‘Amanda Cullins had a visit from her sister Charlotte.’ It was Andrew who had a daughter named Charlotte. For a time Charlotte and her family lived in Fayette County but they’d moved on to South Dakota. Mystery solved.

William C Cullins, Hannah's father

Hannah’s Cullins family goes back to a Revolutionary War Soldier, John Cullins b 1705, originally from Ireland and with whom our families’ members can join the DAR or SAR if they wish. This is an established DAR line. Recently ancestry.com has added ‘Thrulines’ to our trees that show our DNA matches for each person back to our 5^th great grandfathers. That would be to Edward Cullins b 1727, the son of the Revolutionary John.

I’m very near to compiling and printing this information for my family with the help of ancestry.com’s ‘Life Story’ feature that adds significant events that occurred during their lifetimes.

Where from here with the Cullins? Last week I found the feature on ancestry’s DNA pages that helps me color code cousin groups. Wow, the group for Cullins, Cordray and a couple other allied families has 93 cousins of varying degrees. Those are just the ones with public trees who share information. There are so many more with private trees, or who have disconnected their trees, or haven’t built their trees yet. What to do with that cousins group?! I’m thinking about contacting the 93 to see if they would like to have a cousin’s Facebook page for sharing, friendship, and family reunions.

As for my Cullins family I have a choice, I can develop each allied family, as I have for the Cullins – filling out our information on our Muskingum County Ohio lines – or, I can pick a different family entirely. The thing is I recently fell into another Cullins rabbit hole when I received an email about their Delaware roots. Delaware? What! 

On Joining the DAR

Why join the DAR? I suppose there are portions of the population that haven’t a clue what I’m talking about and need this explained, but the vast majority have at least heard that ‘DAR’ stands for Daughters of the American Revolution, an organization first established in Washington D.C. in 1890 by women celebrating their revolutionary roots. These women stepped up to form their own club after being rejected and excluded from membership in the SAR, or Sons of the American Revolution. Now, doesn’t that sound familiar? The DAR has gone on to surpass the SAR in width and depth, in service, fame, and controversy. Both celebrate the American Revolution and our genealogical roots to the founding of our country.

There are articles about the DAR on their website at www.dar.org and various other informational sites, such as wikipedia.com and encyclopedia.com. I won’t repeat the information here other than to say it is a service, social, and genealogical organization that came to me with confusingly mixed reviews.  I’m at the beginning of my approach to membership and will chronicle the journey for others who might like to follow.

My personal involvement with the group has a little history. I started doing genealogy with my paternal grandmother when I was 11 years old. She was proud of her family and we spent summers putting together photo albums and talking about the old folks. She grew up in small town Iowa where 100% of the population was white, most of them were farmers or in farm related businesses and anyone who was anybody belonged to a local church, the Masons or Elks or other service group if you were a man; and with a Mason husband you belonged to the Eastern Star. This was her world. It was a world of helping neighbors build or harvest or quilt. It was a world of patriotism and honoring the flag (which you brought in from the rain or snow, and which you never let touch the ground). It was not an era without problems. There aren’t any of those. But it was a kinder, gentler world where there were no locks on doors and neighbors helped neighbors.

I grew up in the city with roots in the Baptist, Democrat, union beliefs of my mother’s family. But, oh did I love my Methodist, Republican, Masonic and Eastern Star grandparents of Northeastern Iowa. I loved the world of small town politics (my grandfather ran for office), ice cream socials, feeding harvest crews, family reunions, and social evenings of bridge.

I must have been a teen when my grandmother handed me a small book containing the genealogy of the Rowland’s  (her maiden name). With it, she proudly announced that I should be able to join the DAR – something I hadn’t thought about previously. Why she didn’t join is a mystery. She was college educated and a teacher with the skills to pursue a membership, but that quest she bequeathed to me. A child of divorce, maybe she thought it would tie me closer to my father’s family.

But then, in my Democratic soul I heard of Eleanor Roosevelt’s resignation from the DAR over their racial attitudes and the shunning of the opera singer, Marian Anderson, and I put membership out of mind as being impossible. My roots run deep on both sides of the family with abolitionists, underground railroaders, and followers of John Brown. How could I be a member of such an organization? It may be why my grandmother didn't join, and she passed to me with the hope that attitudes would change within the DAR.

Of course, the group, spurred by Eleanor and the times has changed and they welcome women of color as long as they have roots in the Revolution; and they have promotional photos sprinkled with faces of various hues. Still, I’m not much of a joiner and membership hasn’t been a priority.  Now, at 71, I’m looking to please my grandmother, who I imagine as watching over me and my long genealogical journey; and to open the way for my daughters and granddaughters to be DAR and my son and grandsons to be SAR if they choose.

After a lifetime of research and building the family tree I find I have many choices from the revolutionary soldiers in the family. Prior to 2012 I’d hoped to join with a line on my mother’s side so that she could also join. Time got away from me, my mother left us, and I still haven’t joined. Now I’m considering a membership based on the Cullins family – really an odd choice as they are not my mother’s family nor are they my paternal grandmother’s family, but instead are my paternal grandfather’s family.

I was amazed at my family’s involvement in the establishment of Ohio after the Northwest Territory opened for development. The Cullins family was one of those pioneering families that moved into the wilderness, coming up from Virginia or what became West Virginia. And, my joining the DAR through this line rests on the fact that John Cullins (listed with the DAR as Cullens) was the first family member I found that had already been established in the DAR genealogy databank. Someone else has laid the groundwork and what I need to do is prove our family connection and voilà I can be a member – or, at least I hope so.

This then, is the beginning of my membership journey.  It has been a mixed bag so far. About 4 or 5 years ago I enthusiastically contacted, via email, a woman in my area (north costal San Diego County) about help in the application process. She was designated as a contact person, but I never heard from her. I let it drop. Then at the beginning of September 2015 I tried once again – pulling a contact off the Internet for the state-level organization. I heard back immediately from the membership chair for the state of California and I thought I was on my way. She promised that I would hear from a local member who could help me with the application.  By the end of September I still hadn’t heard from that local person. This time, instead of letting it drop I wrote that helpful woman at the state level once again. There is a chapter in the city where I live and she tracked them down immediately.

I have now heard from a local person, who has invited me to a meeting at the country club. Figures – I'm afraid I’ll be a poor donkey in the midst of a herd of well-heeled elephants – but this is Oceanside and not San Diego, so we’ll see. The DAR is a genealogical, social and service organization but I can't help but see it in political terms. I wonder if there'll be any other Bernie Sanders supporters in the group?

I want to meet with someone and finish my initial application before venturing into a meeting. We’ll see how this goes.

Photo from http://jacobandwinnasmith.weebly.com/revolutionary-war-documents.html

Father’s Day 2013

Since the ancestors on my tree (www.ancestry.com) are marked with a picture of the flag of their home state (most often the state in which they died) it proved to be a fairly easy task to identify my Ohio pioneers. 

They range in degree from 2^nd to 6^th Great Grandparents, with the majority as 4^th GGs. In the end there was a total of 18 families – 9 Ohio pioneers families on my father’s side and nine on my mother’s – each family with siblings, cousins, aunts, and uncles. That is an amazing number of people living, working, breathing in the early air of Ohio – a state I’ve only traversed on the turnpike (once) and train without a stop, and a trip to Bowling Green State University where my Florida son, scholarship in hand, spent one freezing semester before leaving the lake effect snow behind for a Florida State degree.

Most of those families came from more easterly states where they had been even earlier pioneers. They were English, German, or Irish. They were the children of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Virginia, or South Carolina pioneers seeking land of their own to farm, seeking greener pastures, or abolitionists shaking off the dirt of a slave-holding state. All of them were American citizens, most with roots going back far beyond the Revolution to the earliest settlement of the colonies. Ohio was the Wild West – raw and new – the Promised Land for this new generation of Americans.

With 18 families identified I moved to making a list of ‘to dos’ – tasks to be completed for each family for their entry in our Ohio pioneers book. That I do this and stick with it is absolutely essential.  I love to research and I could get totally absorbed in that work on one or two families and find myself in December and a long way from completing my intended project.  The list may change over time but if I do the tasks, ticking them off as I go, I should be able to finish in time for Christmas – I hope!

Which family to start with? That choice was totally random. I picked a family from my father’s side – it seems right as today is Father’s Day. And, it actually involves two families – John Cullins, Sr. 1758-1837 and his wife, Rebecca Jane Beatty 1770-1843; and John Cullins, Jr. 1791-1856 and his wife, Dorcas Meredith 1800-1882. I made a file for John and Rebecca, looked at what I have on ancestry.com for them – increased it as much as I could and moved on to researching other sites on the Internet. I’m off and ticking through the ‘to do’ list!  Ohio by Christmas or bust!