Sunday, September 19, 2010

Pictures of my People!

A really fun part of genealogy research is finding photos and portraits of ancestors that you've learned something about. After my post the other day, I realized that I had pictures of several of the individuals I mentioned. I thought it might be fun to share some of them, plus one or two more that are just interesting or fun. If you haven't read the previous post, you might want to do that now, as I will refer to some of the stories I told there.

Remember the illegitimate son of an English nobleman who indentured himself to a Quaker family to come to America? Well here he is, Philip Packer Jr.:
Presumably, this portrait was painted before he came to the wilderness of Pennsylvania, probably when he was still living off his father's money. His father had holdings and business interests in Ireland, and he seems to have kept his little family there quite comfortable. When his first wife died, he married his mistress, Sara Isgar and brought her to his English home. However, since all of his children by her were born prior to their marriage, the children had to make their own way after Daddy's death. His children by his first wife got the estate. Here are Philip Packer, Esq., and the lovely Sarah Isgar, my 10th great grandparents:



Those of you with exceptional memories may have noticed that Eli and Ann Packer were the names of my last Quaker ancestors who died in Gratiot County Michigan in the 1800's. Eli was a direct descendant of these peolple. Philip Jr. became Quaker in Pennsylvania while serving his Quaker master. Perhaps the master had something to do with it, but I suspect the young woman he wanted to marry there had even more influence on his conversion!

Below is Groombridge place, the family home that Philip Packer Sr. re-built outside London in the 1660's. Packer was apparently an architect, a contemporary and friend of Sir Christopher Wren. The grounds are open to the public today, and the 2005 movie, Pride and Prejudice, was filmed there.




The picture below is an illustration of the adventurer with the Persian family meeting with the Indian Mogul in Agra, India circa 1604. His name was John Mildenhall (the family name later became Mendenhall), and his story is so fantastic that I have trouble believing it. It includes passing himself off to the Indian court as the ambassador of Queen Elizabeth I (he was not) and securing trading rights which he later sold to the recently formed British East India Company. Crazy! But apparently true! He is even buried in the oldest English grave in India. You can visit his tombstone there.



On to more normal (and recent) people:

Here is my Great-Grandfather, my maternal grandmother's father, a cute little boy who grew up to have a rather sad and hard life:


Alexander Franklin Fraser

Below are his parents, Bertha Harpham and Clarence Joseph Fraser (of Scottish descent). Clarence was a good deal older than Bertha, and she was widowed young, with no money and several young children. She also had physical and perhaps mental health problems. Her life story -- what I've been able to piece together of it -- is quite painful. Unfortunately, her children suffered right along with her -- a pain that was passed down for a couple of generations until my grandma and her siblings eventually seemed to pull things back together in their own adult lives.


Bertha's mother died when she was only 4 years old, and her father seems to have disappeared from her life at that point. Her mother's mother had died years before in childbirth. So Bertha was was raised by her mother's father, Franklin Squire and his 3rd wife. This 3rd wife had charge of several of Franklin's children and grandchildren by his previous marriages in addition to her own babies as they came along. Plus, for a time, her aging father *and* Franklin's aging father, both in their 80's, were living with the family. Even if her step-grandmother was a saint (and how many of us would be, under those conditions?), I don't imagine poor little Bertha got as much love and attention as every child needs. Her vivid unhappiness in later life, which living family members still recall as their strongest memory of her, is sadly suggestive.

Franklin Squire himself was a busy man outside the home. Not only did he have a rather large farm to tend, he was the early leader of the Michigan Seventh Day Adventist Church that I mentioned the other day. This is a portrait of him:


And last, but not least, I just had to include this picture of my maternal Grandfather's Grandmother. (My g-g grandmother.)
Don't you LOVE the hat? This is Mamie Gooderham Salisbury Harvey Cutler. (Well not Cutler yet in this picture -- he came later.) Based on clues, I believe this may have been her wedding photo when she married her 2nd husband, Samuel Harvey, in 1910 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She was divorced from my g-g grandfather at that time. I believe my he may have been a scoundrel! If I am right on the date of the picture, she is about 39 -- very close to my age right now. :o) My mother remembers visiting Mamie a few times as a child. In her later years, Mamie and her 3rd husband lived very near Tiger Stadium in Detroit. That whole side of my grandpa's family were big Tiger fans! They would meet at Mamie's house and walk down to the games.





9 comments:

Unknown said...

Was just doing research on my family and came across this. I'm related to the packer family as well. I guess that makes us blood related? lol

Unknown said...

I am a decendant of the first wife, with one of my great grandmothers being called Temperance Packer. Spookily I live in Groombridge, and my mother worked there twenty years before she found out we are related to them

Unknown said...

That is crazy! And it's pretty crazy to think there's so many ppl out there that I'm related to that I don't even know about!

Unknown said...

stephanie: I spent all night last night tracing my family directly to Phillip, and I got curious to find out how we were related..our 7th great grandfathers were brothers, mine being Aaron and yours being James. So that makes us..7th cousins? Or 8th..idk.

And pandora: so..we're like..tenth half cousins then? Lol

naturalmom said...

Hello Ladies,

How fun to get some new comments on this old post! Lisa, I don't know how much narrative information you have found about the Packers, but I have some interesting information about some of them, including James and Aaron's parents. If you want to email me at mynaturalfamily@ gmail.com (take out the space), we can see what we have to share. I don't have anything about Aaron's family -- if he married, where he ended up, etc.

Pandora, how wonderful that you live right there by the old ancestral home! (And your mom worked there? So ironic.) I think it's amazing how events so long ago resulted in who we are today. If my ancestor hadn't been illegitimate, he probably wouldn't have come to America, and Lisa Carmona and I (and thousands of other descendants) wouldn't be who we are. Mindboggling, huh? Thanks for commenting!

Stephanie

Unknown said...

ok, i'll email you :)

Anonymous said...

Hi Lisa, I stumbled on your page through my search on google of pictures of Packers. I believe we are some relation? Philip Packer would have been my gr gr gr gr gr gr gr great grandfather from the research I got a few few days ago.
My name is Richard(Rick) Packer
send me a email sometime if you'd like...rpacker@ptd.net

Unknown said...

I realize this was posted 4 years ago...but it is very accurate since I am a Packer. I have about 100 very old pictures from the Packers in Ohio and Nebraska. So....I guess we are all related...what is interesting about this is I did the DNA search on myself on ancestry and I came up 6% Persian. Now I know where it came from...85% was Scottish...lets share some pictures!

Unknown said...

My G Grandmother was a Packer I meant....but I am still Packer.
Did you know that Donnington Castle was owned by John Packer...Phillips Grandfather father? King Charles 1 gave it to John who was a parlementeer, and then a civil war came about and Queen Eliz took it away. I WANT my CASTLE BACK !!