Fellow bloggers, do you ever feel like your posts about the history of your family are getting lost in the jumble of the Internet and not being read by family members? While I have regular readers of my blog and sometimes have posts shared by fellow genealogists, I don’t have much readership outside of the genealogy community.
Thus, I was pleasantly surprised when I received an email from a CHRISTY relative discussing two of my 2022 Christy posts. This email came from the brother of John Frederick Christy. While researching Christy descendants, I discovered that John Frederick Christy died while serving in Korea. Curious about this cousin, I dug a little deeper and shared my research in my John Frederick Christy post dated January 4, 2022. This brother shared some additional details about John Frederick Christy’s death and burial.
Fred’s body arrived home on Christmas Eve accompanied with an honor guard who my father, John Christy said he should go home and enjoy the Christmas Holiday with his family. I recall that my mother Pauline Moore Christy wanted to be sure it was her son that was in the casket so my father and my brother Russel removed the casket lid bolts in order to view the remains. The smell of a chemical, I assume it was formaldehyde, was quite strong. The body had been cleaned but we saw the wounds he suffer including the bayonet to the neck from an enemy soldier that actually killed him according to an Army buddy who survived the attack and talked with my parents several months later.
Fred’s casket remained at our house until it was taken to the church on Saturday after Christmas. The house awls filled with flowers from relatives and the entire community. He was buried at the Indianapolis Crown Hill Mausoleum because my Mother said “He died in the mud but I do not want him to be buried in the mud.”
The second post discussed in the email was my Two Samuels post dated August 11, 2022. In this post, I discuss finding land records for Samuel Christy in Franklin County, Ohio and realizing that my ancestor was not old enough to be the land owner cited in some of these records. Again, my correspondent provided some additional details.
the second Samuel was the uncle to my ancestor
My ancestor is Samuel Henry St. George Christy (1819-1904) [K2V1-4V7] and his uncle is Samuel Christy (1780-1851) [L2G1-D7dD]. I obviously did not look at the FamilySearch tree for an uncle!
However, the best piece of information regarded the fact that my correspondent’s grandfather helped my great great grandmother, Rachel Elmeda Christy Ricketts move from Indiana to Yates Center, Kansas.
My grandfather Ebenezer “Ebb” was a brother to your great great grandmother Rachel Elmeda Christy Ricketts. Ebb and his cousin William J “Bill” Gallimore helped the Rickets move their furniture from Indiana to Yates Center, Kansas. It took them 22 days using a team of mules to pull the wagon(s). I am not certain of the year but it must have been after 17 June 1877 when Charles Desmond Ricketts was born in Clinton County, Indiana and before the 1880 Woodson Kansas Census that show the Ricketts and Ebb living with them. Ebb stayed there for several years and built the first brick front building in Yates Center. I do not know the year (1887/1888) he returned to Indiana but he married Lizzie Young in September25, 1888 in Indiana and lived there the rest of his life.
Attached to the email were transcripts of TWO letters my great great grandmother sent back to Indiana. The first is dated 5 July 1895 and was written to Rachel’s brother, Ebb.
The second letter is dated 4 May 1926 and is written to the niece of Rachel Ricketts.
I am very thankful to have received ALL of this information. While I have a public tree on Ancestry, I don’t have any ‘stories’ attached to it. Currently, my tree is just names, dates and sources. This email is evidence of WHY we need to share the stories not only of the family but of our research. And it is just the incentive I needed to continue sharing my research via this blog.