Gray Family Connections

There is a wonderful feeling when close and distant family members connect with each other through today's technology. Using http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/ Anderson County, Texas Message Board, I have been able to connect with two second cousins who I did not know before. I am a Hollingsworth Gray descendant on my mother's side. One of them is a Brinson Gray descendant on his mother's side and the other is a Simpson Gray descendant on his father's side. We are near each others' ages even though they are first cousins to each other and I am a second cousin to both of them.

They have surnames of Brinson and Simpson, but because their mother and their father were sister and brother, I have a connection with them through my maternal grandfather. The sister's and brother's mother was the oldest sister to my maternal grandfather.

We share a common great-grandfather and great-grandmother who were Richard Lusky "Dick" and Mary Ellisor Gray who I wrote about in an earlier January 2008 post. Their oldest daughter lived from 1878-1924. She married a Simpson who lived from 1861-1942. These two first cousins were born after the death of their grandmother and near to the time of death of their grandfather. The two second cousins did not get to know their grandfather and grandmother.

In my family of fourteen first cousins, including my brother, and two sisters, we were fortunate in the timing of the lives of our grandparents because they lived until most of us were out of high school, going to more school, working, and/or married. Even though my maternal grandfather was a younger brother of my two second cousins' grandmother, he was born 15 years later and lived from 1893-1978. My maternal grandmother lived from 1893-1980.

The miraculous part is that, without today's technology and the Internet, these two second cousins and I would not have made contact with each other. The days of holding family history papers and photographs by one family member are over. The sharing of documents, letters, diaries, photographs, and stories is the only way to go. To do less is to hoard and prevent future generations from knowing about their family history.

Publishing family histories with paper is still important. Locating printed documents or copies of original documents that support and cite genealogy research about our ancestors is critical to telling the facts as they were, without leaving anything out or embellishing the truth, more than it was.

I am grateful for hearing the stories that my relatives recall about growing up, or that their parents told them about their parents. These are the stories that are worth writing down for future generations to read.

One of the second cousins' stories is a memory of attending the father's funeral at Pilgrim Cemetery of their first cousin. Another is about one cousin shooting a bow and arrow into the air and both cousins running for cover when they were young. A third story concerns one cousin loaning his cousin his knife to whittle with while visiting each other.

These are private stories, and to protect the living, no names are given. The stories are told about each other in general terms, and we will leave the details of who told what in the stories to the tellers themselves when they choose to reveal themselves and their stories.

I hope my relatives will read this story. I have sent them email notices about looking at this story and others I have posted here about all sides of my family.

I hope one or more of them will post their own story, short or long, humorous or serious, on this blog about our common ancestors. This is the way we will continue connecting with each other and our future generations.

Other genealogy lovers are also welcome to comment or share their feelings about any of the posts here.

The Man I Wish I Had Known

William Augustus Robbins was his name. He was the father of my husband, Kenneth Charles Robbins. His life ended too soon on May 6, 1948 with intestinal cancer at the age of 60 in Islip, New York when his only child, his son, was almost 16.

Robbie, as his family and friends knew William Augustus, was born to William Walter Robbins and Pauline Wheeler Robbins February 18, 1888 in Babylon, Suffolk County, Long Island, New York.

No one knows how William Walter and Pauline met, but I surmise that it was in New York. Pauline, his mother, had lived in Astoria (Newtown), Queens, New York with her family in 1870, but by 1880, her family had moved to San Francisco, California. Reverend A. L. Brewer married his parents in San Francisco on February 22, 1887.

Robbie probably lived at 528 Golden Gate Avenue in San Francisco when he was 2 years old in 1890 but by 1900 at the age of 12 he was an orphan at the Armitage Orphanage in the Second Township of San Mateo, California. He or someone knew he was born on Long Island and his parents were born in the United States. However, the orphanage did not know his age. It was at this time that his mother, Pauline Robbins, was committed to the Napa State Hospital in Napa, California as an inmate and spent the next forty years until her death at that insane asylum. No one knows why the father, William Walter Robbins, did not come for his son.

By 1910, Robbie was 22 and living at 2624 Bancroft as a student and registered Republican voter in Berkeley City, Oakland Township, Alameda County, California. By some miracle or fate, Robbie was a student at UCLA during this time and received his degree in Civil Engineering in 1914.

After his graduation, Robbie sailed to Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii, where he was employed by the Hawaiian Commercial and Sugar Company at Puneme, Maui, Territory of Hawaii as a clerk.

On July 31, 1917 Robbie registered for WWI. The 2nd Hawaiian Infantry was organized at Hilo, Territory of Hawaii on July 1, 1917. Robbie was stationed at Schofield Barracks, Territory of Hawaii. On September 16, 1918 he was commissioned as 2nd Lieutenant. On January 4, 1919, Robbie was a member of Rosko Company “B”.

In 1920 Robbie at age 31 moved to Wailuku, Maui, Territory of Maui to live with 3 other roommates. Also in that year Robbie was initiated into the Membership on April 10th as a Worthy Noble of the Imperial Council of the Ancient Arabia Order.

By 1924 Robbie departed Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii on November 5, 1924 on the S.S. Wilhelmina and arrived at San Francisco six days later on November 11, 1924.

Somehow and somewhere between 1924 and 1929, Robbie moved again to Long Island, New York to be near other Robbins family members where he was a licensed land surveyor in the Islip, New York area. During those years he met a young lady named Fannie Harriet Love who was a 1925 graduate of Syracuse, New York where her family lived. On June 29, 1929 they were married in Syracuse, New York and began their life together in Islip, New York for the next 19 years. Robbie was 42 and Fannie was 28.

The years between 1929 and 1948 were difficult due to the Great Depression and the coming of WWII, but with their love for each other and love for their families, they did their best. A college degree did not insure that work was always available because people did not have money to buy land and build homes. During the WWII years, Robbie supplemented the family income by working at the Grumman Airplane Factory at a nearby town on Long Island.

In 1932, their only surviving child, a son, was born into their home. He was their pride and joy. He was lucky to have two parents who loved him. In those years of growing up, the family owned only two homes and always lived in the same town. Kenneth always said of his father that he never lost his temper and always spoke with a soft voice.

It was Robbie who paid to have a headstone for his mother at the time of her death so far away in Vacaville, California. Even though his life began as an orphan, Robbie made the most his life with education, adventure, love, and caring for those in his family and his community through his church and his service organizations.

Robbie was buried in the same town where he was born: Babylon, New York. How do I know this much about the father-in-law I never met? It is through beautiful and wonderful conversations with his son, but more so, through the study of genealogy and the information that is available today on the Internet and the help of new friends throughout the country who are willing to help each other break through the “brick walls” of family history.