Traveling Ancestors

Richard Ross

This is the time of the year when we should be thankful for all that we have. I am especially thankful for being able to find information about my maternal great-grandparents. My search for them began in about 1952 and continued on until 1972.

Thomas Farmer Nairn and Janet Small Peddie, sailed aboard the ship Emma. They arrived in New Orleans on 1 December, 1866. They then took a coastal schooner to the port of Matagorda, TX, and were married there on 22 April 1867. Then they traveled to the little town of Manor, TX, near Austin. They lived there and raised their family of ten children.

My great-grandfather was manager of the cotton gin in Manor until just a few years before his death on 4 September, 1920. My great-grandmother died 4 April, 1921.

That all fits nicely together, but it took close to 20 years to find where they landed in the US and where and when they were married. Different family members gave different stories: They were married in Scotland before they left for the US. They ran away because their parents were against the marriage. They embarked in Liverpool and were married on board the ship, or they met on the ship and were married when they arrived. No one had a guess as to which port they eventually arrived or when or where there were married.

In 1972 I was transferred to Fort Meade, MD. After we were settled in our quarters I went to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in Washington, DC. I immediately sought the supervisor of the reading room and posed my problem to him. He told me to check the passenger ship lists for New Orleans because they were the only ones that were indexed. In a few minutes I found my great-grandfather, noted as traveling unaccompanied. I rolled the film a bit more and found my great-grandmother, also traveling unaccompanied.

I still needed to find the date and place of marriage. I tried to imagine the circumstances of their travels from New Orleans to Manor. It finally came to me that the best mode of travel was probably by water, so I made the assumption that they took a costal schooner to some port in Texas and then either overland or on a river boat to their final destination.

I then sent a letter to every parish and county clerk on the Gulf of Mexico from New Orleans to Corpus Christi, TX. After several negative replies, a letter arrived from Matagorda County, TX, with the marriage information. After almost 20 years of searching I had found the marriage date and place. With this information I was able to extend the Nairn line back four more generations. Whenever I think about something to be thankful for, I always think of all the work that went into this search and how thankful I am that it all finally came together.

This is the family story of Maurice T. Evans as told to Richard Ross

 

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