52 Ancestors #2: Robert Fagan (1852 - 1932)

I'm writing about my ancestors for the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge.  Please join me in taking a moment to appreciate some of the people who helped me be here today!

My great-great grandfather, Robert Fagan, was born in Hazleton, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania to Irish immigrants from County Westmeath, Peter and Elizabeth* Fagan.  His birth date as recorded on his death certificate was the 24th of May, 1852.  What is certain is that his parents were already in Pennsylvania by the time he was born, as they are found on the 1850 census living in Hazleton with their Irish-born children, Julia, Garret and Eliza.  Family tradition says they arrived in the US overland across the Canadian border and that they arrived initially through a Nova Scotian port.  In Pennsylvania, sons Robert and Michael and daughter Mary would be born, the family's first American born citizens.

As a youth, Robert was one of the "breaker boys" or "slate pickers" who sat over chutes picking chunks of slate and other unusable materials out of the anthracite.  One of the slate pickers' supervisors at the time was a Mayo native, Edward Treston, whose niece Adelia O'Reilly would leave her home in Dublin for Hazleton sometime around 1882.  In 1883, Robert, by this time a superintendent, and Adelia were married.

1881 patent for bending railroad rails

Robert was also an inventor, holding patents on devices to bend railroad rails and to dispense powder from kegs safely, reducing the risk of explosion.  His obituary in the Wilkes-Barre, PA newspaper also mentions a "device for fighting mine fires, which was used successfully", and an industry journal noted when he had been granted a patent for eliminating rock drilling dust.  As some of the inventions he patented indicate, the safety of the men under his supervision was always a top priority.  The 1888 Report of the Pennsylvania mine inspectors contains the account of a serious fire in the Lattimer mines, and the following citation: "Much praise is due Joseph Dixon and Robert Fagan, and also to their assistants, John Burns, Oliver Rohrbach, Archie Boyd and John Carney, for the great care they took of the hundred and twenty men that were fighting the fire on the inside; and, indeed, I congratulate them on their success, as not one person was seriously injured during the one hundred and eight days and nights that they were engaged fighting this fire."  Given the number of men involved and the length of time the fire burned, it was surely no small task keeping them all safe.

He died the 30th of September, 1932 at the age of 80, having left behind three sons who all became doctors and four daughters who became teachers.

 *Robert's death certificate gives his mother's maiden name as Rogan, his brother Michael's has it as Grogan, and his sister Elizabeth's has it as Brogan.

52 Ancestors: #1 Mary Ann "Dr. Polly" (Foster) Rigsby (1816 - 1893)

I'm writing about my ancestors for the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge.  Please join me in taking a moment to appreciate some of the people who helped me be here today!

My 4th great grandmother Mary Ann Foster was born 1 February 1816 in Wilkes County, Georgia, to Lewis Foster and Jane Lawson.  She married Lewis Johnson Rigsby on 9 January 1831 in Monroe County, Georgia, and in 1842 they moved to Texas.  They settled first in Angelina County, before moving to Tyler County and settling at Woodville.

The Rigsbys had 10 children, the second eldest being my 3rd great grandmother, Eliza Ann Rigsby Barclay Herring.  Doctors being scarce in the neighborhood, Mrs. Rigsby began to educate herself in the practice of medicine, taking a particular interest in women's ailments.  She taught herself through reading every published medical text and journal she could access and was known as "Dr. Polly".

When she died at the age of 77 on 8 May 1893, she was memorialized in her obituary as "no ordinary woman" whose "skill in the treatment of those diseases peculiar to her sex became widely known, and all the later years of her life were kept busy in works of humanity and charity."

My great great grandfather, James Clinton Herring, carried on his grandmother's legacy.  He became a doctor himself and practiced in Jones Prairie, Temple and Burlington, Texas.

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks

I'm participating in the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge!

To read about my 52 Ancestors, choose the "My 52 Ancestors" link in the sidebar.

Joyeux 300ème anniversaire, Natchitoches!

2014 marks the 300th anniversary of the founding of a French colonial outpost in the wilderness of what is now northwestern Louisiana.  Originally founded as the settlement of Fort St. Jean Baptiste des Natchitoches, the city of Natchitoches predates the founding of New Orleans by six years, making it the oldest city in the state of Louisiana.  One of my 2014 genealogy resolutions is to make it back to Natchitoches to help celebrate the tri-centennial!

Kate Chopin House, Cloutierville 2002
Destroyed by fire, 2008

Natchitoches and its French Creole history have been a huge part of my research for years now.  My maternal grandmother would tell me about her own maternal grandmother, a first-generation Texas native who died a Presbyterian but still had the habit of saying a French rosary around the house.  Great-great grandma Emma no doubt learned it from her own mother Esilla, a Rachal from Cloutierville.  Through that family line, I can trace my roots back to the earliest history of the parish, and can even claim a connection to the writer Kate Chopin, who made her home at Cloutierville in the 1890s.  Her husband Oscar was a cousin through our shared ancestors, Julien Rachal and his wife Marie Louise Brevel.

My 5th great-grandfather
Pierre Sebastien Compere

For the genealogist with roots in Natchitoches Parish, there are abundant resources in the town to help you with your research.  Your first stop might be the Natchitoches Genealogy Library, located on the second floor of the Old Natchitoches Courthouse and operated by the Natchitoches Genealogical & Historical Association.  Or it might be the Cammie G. Henry Research Center, located on the campus of Northwestern State University of Louisiana.  Either location will provide you with a wealth of local history resources.  If you're not afraid of having to dig, the Natchitoches Parish Clerk's office contains records dating back to approximately 1732.  The last time I was there, about 12 years ago, the majority of those older records were not indexed so you had to have a pretty good idea of what you were looking for before you went.  You can also visit some of your ancestors directly in either the American Cemetery or the Catholic Cemetery, the oldest cemeteries in town.  Cemetery listings have been published and should be available at either of the research libraries listed above.  Whatever your course of action, I highly recommend checking out the bibliography I've created of books that have ranged from helpful to absolutely indispensable in doing my own research.  The more groundwork you've done ahead of time with those resources, the more time you can devote to those available only in Natchitoches.

Chapel altar, Fort St. Jean Baptiste

If you're more into experiencing the history rather than looking it up in books and documents, a trip to the Fort St. Jean Baptiste State Historic Site gives you a taste of what frontier life was like for the earliest French settlers.  Volunteers in period costume guide visitors on a tour around the site, featuring reproduction barracks, a chapel and even a large outdoor oven where the French baked their bread.  Another important historic site near Natchitoches is Melrose Plantation, which was built by the Metoyers, former slaves who became a founding family of the Cane River colony.  Today Melrose is a museum and a National Historic Landmark.  Also in the area is Oakland Plantation, now part of the Cane River Creole National Historic Park, which film buffs might recognize as the filming location of The Horse Soldiers, starring John Wayne and William Holden.  Check out the Cane River National Heritage Area website as well, for even more sites to visit and downloadable maps and a travel guide.

All photos by the author.

A Natchitoches Bibliography

The following will be of interest to anyone doing research on ancestors from Natchitoches, Louisiana.  The majority of these books are still in print and available via their publishers or an online retailer such as Amazon.  Copies of all books on the list can also be located in libraries via WorldCat.

• Burton, H. Sophie, and F. Todd Smith. Colonial Natchitoches: A Creole Community on the Louisiana-Texas Frontier. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2008.
• De Ville, Winston. Marriage Contracts of Natchitoches, 1739-1803. Nashville, 1961. Print.
• Mills, Donna Rachal. Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana. Tuscaloosa: Mills Historical Press, 1985.
• Mills, Elizabeth Shown, and Gary B. Mills. Tales of Old Natchitoches. Natchitoches: Association for the Preservation of Historic Natchitoches, 1978.
• Mills, Elizabeth Shown. Natchitoches, 1729-1803: Abstracts of the Catholic Church Registers of the French and Spanish Post of St. Jean Baptiste Des Natchitoches in Louisiana. Westminister, MD: Heritage Books, 2007.
• Mills, Elizabeth Shown. Natchitoches 1800-1826: Translated Abstracts from Register Number Five of the Catholic Church, Parish of St. François Des Natchitoches, Louisiana. Bowie, MD: Heritage Books, 2004.
• Mills, Elizabeth Shown. Natchitoches Church Marriages, 1818-1850: Translated Abstracts from the Registers of St. François Des Natchitoches, Louisiana. Westminster, MD: Heritage, 2007.
• Mills, Elizabeth Shown. Natchitoches Colonials: Censuses, Military Rolls, and Tax Lists, 1722-1803. Chicago: Adams Press, 1981.
• Mills, Gary B., and Elizabeth Shown Mills. The Forgotten People: Cane River's Creoles of Color. Baton Rouge: LSU, 2013.
• Prud'homme, Lucile Keator, and Fern B. Christensen. The Natchitoches Cemeteries: Transcriptions of Gravestones from the Eighteenth, Nineteenth, and Twentieth Centuries in Northwest Louisiana. New Orleans: Polyanthos, 1977.
• Riffel, Judy. Natchitoches Baptisms, 1817-1840: Abstracts from Register 6 of St. Francis Catholic Church, Natchitoches, Louisiana. Baton Rouge: Comite Des Archives De La Louisiane, 2007.
• Riffel, Judy. Natchitoches Baptisms, 1841-1849: Abstracts from Register 9 of St. Francis Catholic Church, Natchitoches, Louisiana. Baton Rouge: Comité Des Archives De La Louisiane, 2010.

Family storage surprises

On a recent visit back home, I decided to investigate a couple of old boxes of photos that had been sitting around the old family home ever since they had been brought from my grandparents' old house in East Texas.  The boxes were full of old pictures, old Christmas cards, postcards, newspaper clippings, obituaries... things that are as good as gold to a genealogist.

Buried way down in the bottom of one box was a small baggie, filled with Canadian currency and some other unusual coins.  I'll probably never know the story of how they got there, since to my knowledge no one in the family had ever been to Canada, but I was certainly intrigued by some of the other items that were with them.  These coins were not legal tender, but were either souvenir or promotional coins that provide a small glimpse into the history of American advertising.

Seton Infirmary, Austin - Historical Notes

A chapter in Austin's medical history is about to come to close as the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, who have been involved in Austin's hospital community for over a century, announced they will depart the city for new assignments next year.  The nuns first arrived in Austin to run the Seton Infirmary, which was chartered by the State of Texas in 1900 and opened in 1902.  As the Infirmary has been a topic of my past research, I thought I'd write up a little something on it to mark this end of an era.

The original Seton Infirmary (named for the founder of their order, St. Elizabeth Seton) was a four-story red brick building located on 26th Street between Nueces and Rio Grande Streets, in what is now the West Campus neighborhood.  The site can be seen slightly northwest of the university in this 1919 map of Austin in the collection of the Texas State Library.  It was designed by St. Louis architect Rockwell Milligan in the "Southern Colonial" style.  When first opened, it contained 40 beds, although that was expanded to 75 beds by 1914.  The top floor served as a nursing school.  It was demolished in 1975 when Seton's base of operations moved to its current location on West 38th Street.