Genealogy: Our Milley

One college summer, I volunteered to help my uncle run a fire works booth for a few days.  I stayed at my grandparents' house.  My grandma had passed away four years earlier and my grandpa had remarried the previous year.  He and his wife had moved into her house for the time being and I was alone at my grandparents' house.  Snoop that I am, I stayed awake into the night looking through photo albums.  I also found a family tree of one side of my family that someone had researched and printed copies of.

While I had always been interested in genealogy, this was the catalyst to begin my own research.  I copied the information into a notebook and when assigned to research my family tree the following semester, I already had a great resource.  I used to do what I could for free; now I sometimes pay for an Ancestry membership.

I love it.  Unfortunately, my grandmothers both passed away before I was old enough to realize that I should be asking them questions.  And as for my grandfather, it's just not something he's very interested in or knows much about.  And on the other side, I have no one to ask but my aunts, who remember what they can, but it's limited to the more-recent.  And so I search.  And problem solve.  And approach a family gap from every angle I can possibly think of, searching records and cross-referencing what I do know, trying to find that one clue that will break open my knowledge just a little bit further.

But I wanted to write about this tonight, because my research brought tears to my eyes.  And surely there are plenty of similar instances where it could have, but alas... probably will not be very interesting for anyone that's even made it this far... but I wanted this out there.

First of all, back in the day huddled over those sheets of paper at my grandparents', there was my great great great grandmother, Lear White.  That's right:  Lear.  But doesn't that sound weird?  There were notes beside this that it was probably "Leah" though somewhere there was a family Bible that listed her name as "Lear".  I hoped for "Lear," but assumed her name was Leah.  So do most on Ancestry.

And then I got to see this:

Isn't it awesome?  Her name was Lear.  And I just love it.  I wish I knew more about her.  I don't know who her parents were.  I know her maiden name, but when she was 8 years old she was living with a family with a different last name.  And when she was 18, she was living with a different family than the previous one.  I don't know her story, but I hope I can find out more someday.

Then their son, Clinton, goes on to marry a girl named Ola McClain (hence my great great grandparents).  But at some point researching, I realized their daughter, Winnie, marries Andrew McClain.  Brother and sister marrying brother and sister.  Which has happened a few times in my family and I think it is so neat.  Then tonight I noticed that Winnie dies when she's just 18 years old--I had never noticed this before.  And it made me so sad.

So then I look back at a document I had open in another window.  Not paying attention, I had thought it was a marriage record and that Joel and Lear had married off two children in the same year:  Winnie and Milley.  So I was trying to find a record for Milley or to figure out if this was a shortening of the name of one of their daughters.  Now as I looked back and looked closer, I realized it was a page of birth records and that Winnie and Milley were twins!

Milley hadn't appeared in other family trees I had looked at, but here was proof of her, so I added her and began to look for more information.  And found it.

Big thank you to someone who took the time to catalog for FindAGrave.

"Our Milley."  She died in infancy.  She's buried in Kentucky, the birthplace of her parents, though the rest of her family moved to Missouri and are buried there, including her twin sister.  My eyes well tonight.  For both of these girls.  And for their parents.  And Winnie's husband.

And what a sweet infant gravestone.  And more evidence of "Lear," though FindAGrave lists the parents as "J and Lou," because once again, people doubt her name.  If not for that one birth record, I would not know Milley existed.

"Our Milley."