52 Ancestors #9: Levi Albert Bitterman (1834 - 1913) - Lost and Found

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!

At Christmas in 1887, an Ohio woman named Leah Kirchner received the photograph that accompanies this post.  The man pictured is Leah's brother, Levi Bitterman, my great-great-great grandfather.  Levi was 53 years old, and Leah - and the rest of the Bitterman family - had not laid eyes on him for nearly forty years.

They were not to see him in person for another seven years, when the following notice appeared in an Indiana newspaper¹:

Levi Bitterman Comes to Akron, Ohio, to See His Brother

 Akron, O.. July 13 -- Forty-four years ago Levi Bitterman, then aged 16, ran away from home.  He was never heard of and was long since considered dead.  He returned to the home of his brother George in Cuyahoga Falls today.  He is now a prosperous merchant in Newestown, Tex.  Bitterman was in the rebel army, and after the first day of the Battle of Chickamauga, after the Union forces were driven from the field, he found his brother Daniel, a Union solder, dying.  They had not met for nineteen years, but recognized each other.  The wounded man died in his arms.

Born on the 4th of July, 1834, in Stark County, Ohio, Levi was christened in a Lutheran church², though family tradition holds that just a few generations previous the family had been Jewish.  His father, Joseph, was an immigrant, and according to Levi's older sister Mary Ann's branch of the family, he had come from Alsace and the original spelling of their name was Biedermann.  A letter from one of Mary Ann's sons, Ezra, to his cousins in Texas, recounts some of the history of the family as far as he knew it and can be found in the pension file Levi's widow received from the state of Texas³.  One of the things Ezra repeats in his letter is the story that Levi had run away from home as a teenager after a disagreement with his mother.

So just what had he been up to all those years he was missing?  Apparently he joined a railroad company, worked on boats on the Great Lakes for a while, almost became a gold prospector, and finally went back to the railroad.  By the beginning of the Civil War he had ended up in Texas, where he married into a French Creole family at Liberty, the Rachals, who had left their native Natchitoches to come to Texas in 1844.  He joined a Texas regiment with his in-laws, and after the war moved to Nuecestown (located in part of what is now Corpus Christi), where he variously tried his hand at farming, ferrying, cotton ginning, and running a general store.  He was successful in all of these endeavours, and an article published in his hometown paper gives the impression that he just couldn't sit still for too long at any one thing⁴.  In fact, he only retired completely in 1906, 7 years before he died in 1913 at the age of 78.

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1 "Turns Up After 44 Years." Goshen Times 18 July 1895.^↩
2 Powell, Esther Weygandt. Stark County, Ohio: Early Church Records and Cemeteries. Akron, OH, 1973.^↩
3 #49919, (Mrs) Levi Bitterman, Confederate pension applications, Texas Comptroller's Office claims records. Archives and Information Services Division, Texas State Library and Archives Commission.^↩
4 "Began Railroading at Age of 14 Years." Evening Independent [Massillon, Ohio] 14 Mar. 1912.^↩

Letter, Rev. Bernard O'Reilly to the Bishop of Meath, 1823

The other day in my post on my 3x great grandfather, Laurence O'Reilly, I mentioned some other O'Reillys who seem to be connected to his family.  One of these was Rev. Bernard O'Reilly, an Irish-born priest who taught in France.  A letter from him to Patrick Joseph Plunkett, the Bishop of Meath, can be found in the third volume of Dean Anthony Cogan's The Diocese of Meath, a history of the diocese compiled between 1862 and 1870.  Cogan's sources have since been lost, and his compilation is all that remains of the early records of the diocesan archives.

Seminaire de St. Sulpice, September, 1823

My Lord,

I trust that the motives which induced me to your Lordship will justify the propriety thereof.  It's to inform you that the Bishop of Perigeau [sic - Périgueux] has written to the superior of this seminary, requesting of him to send him an ecclesiastic qualified to profess theology in his seminary, and that I have been elected to fill that situation.  Although I have no doubt of your granting me permission to accept of it (particularly as I want three years of age for priesthood), still, I considered it a duty incumbent on me to inform you of it, and to request your sanction and approbation.  I shall be comfortably situated, and be worth about a thousand francs per annum.

I should think that your dimissories to Mr. Duelax, superior of St. Sulpice, will be sufficient for me there ; but in case any other should be required, the bishop shall write to you about them.  The death of my uncle has exceedingly affected me ; but it gave me peculiar satisfaction to learn that he died regretted by his flock, particularly by the widow and the orphan ; which gives me room to hope that he has exchanged this world for a better.  Dr. Kearney, superior of the Irish college, inquires for you incessantly, recalling with pleasure the happy days which you both passed together in this capital.  All your subjects at Paris are well, and join me in best respects to your Lordship.  Wishing you many happy years to govern the diocese of Meath,

I remain, with veneration,

Your Lordship's most obedient and humble servant,

 BERNARD O'REILLY.

Of note here is the mention that Bernard lacks "three years of age for priesthood".  If the canonical minimum of 25 applies, this puts Bernard's age at 22, making him born about 1801.  The other tantalizing item of note is the mention of an uncle who has died.  The mention of a flock would suggest the uncle was also a cleric, but if that is the case then the mention of "the widow and the orphan" seems to be figurative.  But who was he?  Clearly he was someone who had died recently, and whose death the bishop knew about.  Unfortunately, as Bernard didn't name him in the letter and these archives no longer exist, I may never know the answer to that question.

Bernard is mentioned twice more in a catalogue of additional letters held by the Meath archives.  Unfortunately Cogan did not reproduce these letters in their entirety, so the originals are now lost, but the catalogue entry does provide us with useful information nevertheless.

1825, May 29th.  Letter from Alexander, Bishop of Perigueaux, to Dr. Plunket, passing encomiums on Rev. Bernard O'Reilly, a native of our diocese, who had been recently appointed Professor of Theology, in the College of Sarlat.
1825.  Letter of Rev. Bernard O'Reilly to Dr. Plunket.

 We learn that Bernard's post is at Sarlat - the same place mentioned in a list of contributions provided for "the continuance of the public sympathy" (probably famine relief), published in the Cork Examiner on 22 March 1848.  "The Rev. Bernard O'Reilly, Professor of Divinity in Sarlat, France, per L. O'Reilly M.D., Radoath" provided £12.  L. O'Reilly M.D. of Radoath (sic) could only be Dr. Laurence O'Reilly of Ratoath, who was proved to be a brother of James O'Reilly of Mount Albion House through the probate of James's will.  It would appear that Bernard was another sibling (very likely the Rev.O'Reilly who received a bequest from James), and the likelihood of there being more than one Bernard O'Reilly from Meath who became a theology professor at Sarlat stretches credibility.  I propose that Bernard O'Reilly who wrote to the bishop and who was represented in the Irish donations by Dr. Laurence O'Reilly are the same individual, and that he was Dr. O'Reilly's brother.  Given the educational backgrounds and financial situations of these O'Reillys, it also seems likely they were from a family of some standing in the county.  There were at least three different O'Reilly families with significant property in Meath, however, so it will take some more time and research to figure out which one was the likely origin of these brothers.

52 Ancestors #8: Laurence O'Reilly, Dubliner

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!

Some time back I wrote a post detailing the search for my great-great grandmother Adelia's family.  With more than a little luck o' the Irish (and even more perseverance) I was able to trace her parents in Ireland.

Adelia's father, Laurence O'Reilly, was born around 1820, possibly in County Meath.  What I have been able to establish is that he had some sort of connection to three brothers who came from Meath a generation before, although I have not yet figured out the precise relationship.  The eldest of these brothers (and the only one I have not yet ruled out as my Laurence's father) was another Laurence, who was born about 1794 and was a medical doctor who received his qualifications in Scotland in 1817 before returning to Ireland and becoming the Dunshaughlin district medical officer at Ratoath, Meath.  Another brother, Bernard, became a priest and theology professor in Sarlat, France, so would not have been my Laurence's father.  The youngest I have on record, James, was a gentleman-farmer at Clooney, Meath, before retiring to Dublin to a house called variously Mount Albion or Montalbin Lodge or House.  This James was stated in the Dublin newspaper reports on the probate of his will (which his eldest brother Dr. Laurence O'Reilly contested due to some dispute with the executors) as having been a lifelong bachelor and thus also an unlikely candidate to be my Laurence's father.  What is known is that this James did provide railroad and bank stocks for a minor named Charles O'Reilly (my Laurence had a son named Charles under the age of ten at the time of the will's execution in 1873; this Charles was baptized in Aghamore, Mayo, in 1865 with a James O'Reilly as godfather and on the 1901 and 1911 census appears in Dublin with his income source given as stock annuities) and that James's former home, Mount Albion House, was home to my Laurence's family from at least 1874 until about 1877.  It is, of course, also possible that Laurence's father could have been another brother entirely who has not yet been linked to these three, but the connections to James seem likely to me that he was probably my Laurence's uncle.

I know virtually nothing about Laurence's early life, only that he married Bridget Treston, a Mayo native, sometime before 1852.  The earliest baptism date found for one of their children on record is 1854, when their son James Thomas O'Reilly was baptised at Bekan, Mayo, although the oldest children, Laurence and Anne, have not been found in the baptism records.  1868 seems to mark the last of their Mayo-born children, Francis, and in 1875 their youngest son, John Joseph, was born and baptized in Dublin.

In 1874 the O'Reillys were certainly resident at Mount Albion House.  It is from that address that Laurence registered a dog, a brown terrier, while his son Laurence registered a brindle greyhound from the same address.  In December of 1876 a notice was published of Laurence's bankruptcy (unfortunately, the newspaper provided no details of how he arrived at this situation) and announced a sale of his property, although six months later the obituary of his daughter Kate still gave Montalbin House as the O'Reilly address.  Laurence and family left the house sometime before 1880, by which point his obituary in July of that year gives his residence as Joanna Cottage, Crumlin Road.  He was buried in the St. Bridget's section of Glasnevin Cemetery.

52 Ancestors #7: Julien Rachal - An Unconventional American Patriot

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!

When Americans think of the Revolutionary War, most will immediately think of places located within the 13 colonies and the residents of those colonies fighting in the Continental Army against the British.  They didn't fight the war alone, however.  They had allies from Spain and France, and many might be surprised to know those allies included inhabitants of Louisiana, then under Spanish government.

My French Creole ancestor, Julien Rachal, was one of those soldiers.  Born at Natchitoches in 1760 to Louis Rachal dit Blondin and Marie Louise LeRoy¹, Julien was a member of one of the oldest and most influential families in the area, and his wife, Marie Louise Brevel, was the daughter of a leading citizen of the parish.  As a member of the local militia, Julien served in the Galvez Expedition to Pensacola under Spanish governor Bernardo de Gálvez in a successful bid to push the British out of Spanish Florida and give their beleaguered allies further north respite from the threat of invasion from the south.  Due to this service, Julien and other soldiers like him who were not Americans* nevertheless count among the veterans of the American Revolution and even count toward eligibility for the American Revolution-based lineage societies.

For those interested in tracing a potential qualifying ancestor in a non-English colony, the Northwestern State University of Louisiana's Creole Heritage Center has a listing of names from the Natchitoches militia available in PDF form on their website.  Another good resource I found online is this collection of research by Dr. Granville Hough on Patriots from Spanish America.  While Spain was the administrating government from this period, the records include many names of French and German extraction.

*Julien died in 1810, seven years after the Louisiana Purchase.  Although not born an American, he technically died one.  His death is recorded as occurring on August 5, 1810.²

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1 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.^↩

2 Riffel, Judy. "Natchitoches Burials, 1807-1813." Le Raconteur XXXI.4 (2011): 250.^↩

52 Ancestors #6: Josiah Dotson - A Museum Piece

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!

Growing up, I always heard a story that there was an antique Civil War era rifle in the family that had been passed down through several generations and had been given to a museum by my grandfather's oldest brother.  As it turns out, the story is true!

Pictured is that Civil War rifle, and it currently resides at the Stone Fort Museum on the campus of Stephen F. Austin University in Nacogdoches, Texas.  It was passed down through the generations from Josiah Dotson, my great-great-great grandfather.  Josiah, originally a native of Bledsoe County, Tennessee, became a Texas resident in about 1850 and served in the 18th Texas Infantry during the Civil War along with two of his brothers, Jeremiah and Milo.  According to the museum's information, the rifle has "Dotson" carved into the stock.

Josiah and Amanda (Leverton) Dotson

Josiah was one of ten children born to William and Margaret (Stewart) Dotson, who were both originally from North Carolina.  All but one of the Dotson children were born in Tennessee, while Josiah's youngest sister Margaret was born in Georgia.  In 1850 the Dotsons can be found residing in Chickamauga, Walker County, Georgia, and later that same year Josiah married Sarah Amanda Leverton in Murray County, Georgia.  Shortly afterwards the extended Dotson family moved again, settling first at Houston County, Texas, where my great-great grandfather Detroit was born.  Some stayed there, and some moved on to Cherokee County, settling around the area of New Summerfield, where they were still living when the country went to war a decade later.

Josiah and his brothers all survived the war and Josiah returned to farming at New Summerfield, where his grandchildren and great-grandchildren continued to live.  Josiah and his wife, Amanda, are buried among many of their family members at McDonald Cemetery in New Summerfield.

52 Ancestors #5: Sir Brian Tuke, painted by Holbein

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!

Hans Holbein the Younger, Sir Brian Tuke
oil on wood panel, ca. 1527-1534
National Gallery of Art, Andrew W. Mellon Collection

Art history has always been one of my favorite subjects, so much so that it was one of the fields I considered going into after high school.  Imagine making the discovery a few years down the line of an ancestor whose portrait was not only hanging in a national museum, but was also painted by one of the great masters of European portraiture!  This painting is of my 13x great grandfather, Sir Brian Tuke.  I descend from him through his daughter Mary (Tuke) Scott, down through the Filmers of East Sutton, Kent and the Clays of Virginia.¹

Sir Brian Tuke was one of Henry VIII's secretaries who also was the first Master of the Post and treasurer to the royal household.  He was also well known in his day as a scholar and antiquarian, and penned a dedication for an edition of Chaucer. An entry on his life can be found in the Dictionary of National Biography, which gives us much more information about his life.  Since a good biographical writeup is already availalbe, this gives me the opportunity to do something a little different here: I'm going to analyze what Holbein's painting directly tells us about him.

First, the Latin inscription at the top:  "BRIANVS TVKE, MILES".  This tells us we are looking at a picture of "Brian Tuke, Knight".  The second half of the inscription tells us "ANo ETATIS SVÆ LVII", that he is in his 57th year of age.  The next inscription is French: "DROIT ET AVANT" ("right and forward"), the Tuke family motto.  The last bit of text that appears in the painting is on a folded piece of paper lying next to Tuke's hand, one finger slightly directed toward it.  It reads: "NVNQVID NON PAVCITAS DIERVM MEORVM FINIETVR BREVIS".  This passage serves a threefold purpose: it is a Biblical quote (Job 10:20), establishing Tuke as both a good Christian and humble man (despite the richness of his garb); it establishes him as a learned man who can read the Latin that was the only version of the Bible available in his lifetime; and it serves as a sober meditation on the end of life approaching.  The quote translates to "Shall not the fewness of my days be ended shortly?"²

The background is fairly simple, in keeping with most of Holbein's portraits, so we may move on to the representation of the subject.  After inscriptions, the most important clues about a sitter come from their clothing.  Tuke's manner of dress shows him to be a man of obvious wealth, but not one of excessive taste.  The only piece of jewelry he wears is clearly expensive in manufacture but religious in nature, a gold crucifix bearing five black pearls.  In his hand are a pair of gloves, a popular symbol of gentility in Tudor portraiture.  Though his clothes are crafted from rich materials (note the cloth of gold sleeves, fur collar on what appears to be a black silk gown and single gold button on a black high-necked doublet, which appears to be fur-lined), Tuke eschews the stylistic elaborations that became popular during Henry's reign: bright color, damask, slashed sleeves or a feathered cap in the style of other courtiers, wearing instead solemn black and a cap in the fashion of noted humanist Erasmus, Sir Thomas More (who was a friend of Tuke's) and Sir Thomas Cromwell in their Holbein portraits.  While Tudor sumptuary laws did dictate to a large degree what a person was allowed to wear, as a knight Tuke was already elevated to a status that placed him above most of the dress restrictions, save those reserved for the royal family or their closest relatives.

Had there not been the identifying inscription on this painting to tell us who the sitter was, I would conclude that we have here a Tudor era gentleman in his later years, wealthy and very well educated, with a sober, intellectual outlook on life.  With the inscription and what biographical information exists on Tuke, we know that this was indeed the case.

1 My 4x great grandmother, Mary Clay (Thaxton) Hale, was a first cousin of at least four and niece to at least one of the Clays who appear in Wikipedia's list. She was born in 1793 in Halifax County, Virginia to Lucy Clay and William Thaxton. Lucy was a great granddaughter of Martha Filmer Green, whose father Henry Filmer of East Sutton, Kent was in turn a great grandson of Mary Tuke Scott, mentioned above.↩
2 On the matter of translations: I have quoted here from the Douay-Rheims translation rather than NIV or King James as it captures the meaning of the Latin more fully.↩

Image courtesy of The National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.

52 Ancestors: #4 Rev. James Bell Watt (1820 - 1860)

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!

Reverend James Bell Watt, a Presbyterian minister, was born in Fairfield County, South Carolina on the 4th of April, 1820.  His parents, James Watt and Margaret Bell, were both descendants of Ulster Scots pioneers who arrived in South Carolina in the mid-18th century.  He was said to have had a younger brother, and my own research so far has turned up three sisters: Martha Jane (m. James Robinson Castles), Rebecca Frances (m. David Wills), and Sarah Ann (m. Henry Carson Castles).  The Watts, like many of the other families of lowland Scottish heritage in their community, were members of the Presbyterian faith.

James Bell Watt

James began a classical education at Mt. Zion College in Winnsboro, SC but left school not long after on the occasion of his marriage to his cousin Nancy M. Bell on 31 December 1839.  Nancy's branch of the Bells were Associate Reformed Presbyterians, and sometime after they were married he also joined the Associate Reformed church.  After the birth of their first son, Frank, he picked up his studies again at Erskine College in Due West, SC and spent 1841-1842 there studying courses that he felt would be useful in his chosen field as a minister.  He did not graduate with a degree, but was licensed by the First Associate Reformed Presbyterian Synod in 1843.  Rev. John Douglas's history of Steele Creek describes him as "tall and slender, a man of much personal dignity, of great suavity of manner, of ardent piety, a good preacher, fluent and impressive, though not boisterous."  In addition to his work as a minister, he also "wrote freely for the press" as a correspondent for the Due West Telescope.

In November of 1844 this "brilliant and magnetic" minister took his first assignment at Sardis and Steele Creek ARP churches in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina.  On 10 April 1854 his wife Nancy died after a long illness, and Rev. Watt remarried later that year to Louisa Angeline Neal, whose family were members of the Steele Creek congregation of long standing.  In 1858 he broke his affiliation with the ARP church over the issue of closed communion (he didn't like that his own mother wasn't allowed communion in his church as she was Presbyterian, not ARP) and returned to the Presbyterian church.  He was installed as minister of the Steele Creek Presbyterian Church, but this appointment was to last for only two years.  On 16 September 1860, Rev. Watt died of typhoid fever he had contracted while ministering to the sick of his congregation.  Eleven days later his youngest son, Walter Wellington Watt, was born.  Rev. Watt was laid to rest in his church's cemetery.

Rev. Watt was survived by six children in all: sons Frank and Charles (my 3x great-grandfather) and daughter Margaret by his first wife, and sons William Neal, James Bell Jr., and Walter Wellington by his second.  Frank died at the hospital at Gordonsville, Virginia during the Civil War.  Charles and William Neal both went to Texas.  Margaret is supposed to also have married and moved to Texas.  J. B. Jr. and Walter remained in the Charlotte area and were members of the Steele Creek church where their father had been pastor.

See also:

• The History of Steele Creek Church, Mecklenburg County, N.C. - Rev. John Douglas (1901)
• Revised and expanded edition of Douglas's history - Steele Creek Historical Committee (1976)
• The Centennial History of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church (1905)