Stacy Webb Thompson

All that is gold does not glitter,

Not all who wander are lost;

The old that is strong does not wither,

Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

J.R.R.Tolkien The Fellowship of the Ring

My great great grandfather, Stacy Webb Thompson left what appeared to be a stable household in Curwinsville, Pennsylvania to venture westward. By 1869 he had moved all five of his sons (Ambrose, Byron, Edwin, Stacy and John) to Michigan.  Later his only daughter Lilly and his wife Elizabeth would follow.  With the exception of Edwin, who moved southward to Ligioner, Indiana, and John who moved first to Colorado and later to New York, all of his family remained in Michigan for the rest of their lives.

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Missouri Compromise Map

Between the years 1819 and 1824 the world changed in many ways:

In America, slavery was very much a part of our society.  In 1820 the Congress of the United States passed legislation known as the “Missouri Compromise” where the state of Missouri was admitted as a slave state and the state of Maine was admitted as a free state.

That same year 18,951 black slaves left Luanda, Angola bound for the United States of America.

In 1821 Napoleon Bonaparte died in exile on the island of St. Helena.

Luanda Angola Slavery

Napoleon

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In 1904, America had just re-elected Theodore Roosevelt as President and commenced building the Panama Canal.  In 1906 the World’s Fair opened in America’s Gateway-To-The-West City, St. Louis, and the great Earthquake wiped out San Francisco, California.  In between those two years, Einstein introduced his theory of Relativity.  It was a world full of change and development, and that was the world into which brothers Goodenow and Ellsworth were born.

Goodenow and Ellsworth with Grandpa Michael Kowalski

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Ray and his sister Clara

As a kid, the concept of a “second-cousin” was difficult to comprehend.  Ray & Grace Randall were of the same generation as our parent’s. They came to the same family gatherings as Uncle Goodenow and Aunt Hazel, but they had a different last name and called our grandparents “Uncle Walter and Aunt Blanche.”

Later I learned that “Uncle Ray” was the son of Grandpa Walter’s older sister Claudia who had died a long time ago. I was their “second cousin.”

Family whispers said that they were “Christian Scientists” and didn’t believe in doctor’s. Some of my first inquiries into religious beliefs centered around Christian Scientists and Mary Baker Eddy.

Uncle Ray was a plumber by vocation.  He and Aunt Grace had no children.  They lived on the West side of Detroit in a suburb called Dearborn. Aunt Grace was a big woman with a big laugh.  Uncle Ray was smaller with a laugh made without opening his mouth.  Both were kind souls to their “second cousins.”

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Ellsworth, Stacy C., Herbert and Walter Thompson

Today we look at four generations of Thompson’s:

Stacy Clay Thompson, my great grandfather,  born in 1856 and died in 1944

Walter Stacy Thompson, my grandfather, born in 1877 and died in 1960

Ellsworth Walter Thompson, my father, born in 1906 and died in 1989

Herbert Walter Thompson, my brother, born in 1936 and still very much alive

These two photos are the only ones I have of the four generations of Thompson’s in a single photograph. I believe these photographs were taken in 1939 in the back yard of my Grandfather’s house in Detroit, Michigan.

A lot has transpired since Stacy accompanied his father Stacy Webb Thompson and three of his brothers on foot from central Pennsylvania to southwestern Michigan.[Continue Reading…]

It seems strange to think about Grandma having cousins, yet clearly she did. Some had the last name “Isaman.” Allow me to attempt to explain.

Grandma’s mother, Emma Kowalske , grew up in East Jordan, Michigan during the middle years of the 19th century.

Her father, Michael Kowalske had immigrated from Germany to America, along with his wife, Minnie and their five children.  They settled briefly with his parents, who had immigrated to America in 1847,  near the town of Sheboygan, Wisconsin, then travelled by sail boat to the eastern shores of Lake Michigan where they disembarked with farm animals and began their new life in the wilds of Northern Michigan. There is a lot more to write about Michael and the Kowalske’s, but that is for another entry. Today we are visiting the Isaman’s.

The following is from the Charlevoux County Genealogical Society.

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