Since my brother, Gale, is now in a nursing home, I have been going through old photo albums, slides, and negatives that I have been finding around his house. Most of them are pictures of our family, but here are a few others I found.
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I have been taking a break from genealogy for these last few months mainly for three reasons (besides a chronic case of procrastination):
1. I spent two wonderful weeks in Dallas for Thanksgiving with my sister, Holly, whom I hadn’t seen in almost two years due to the pandemic and then her visit to Cleveland for the Christmas holidays. 2. The elusive Richard Dunn (1755-1815), our 5th great grandfather, left us no paper trail as to how he arrived in America or who he married. He has left me frustrated. I have erased his ancestral line on our family tree twice now. I think he fought in the Revolutionary War, married a woman named Esther who gave him at least six sons, and received a land grant of 200 acres of land in Mifflin County, Pennsylvania. So at least the mystery as to how the Dunn family ended up in Pennsylvania is solved. 3. My brother, Gale, who is 78, was hospitalized right after Christmas with several illnesses and is now living in a nursing home near me. All prayers and positive thoughts sent his way will be appreciated. THE FAMILY OF OTIS L. SHAW But, today, I want to to introduce you to the family of Otis L. Shaw (1869-1927), a younger brother of our great grandfather, Thomas Houston Shaw. He was born in Kings, Nova Scotia, Canada, one of twelve children born to Thomas Houston Shaw, Sr., and Mary Elizabeth Glover Reynolds. The family attended a Presbyterian Church. Otis listed his occupation as a grocer and then, later, as a traveling salesman in the wholesale foods industry on census records. He became a naturalized U. S. citizen on March 3, 1904. He had moved to Marblehead, Massachusetts, around 1881 and married Sarah (“Sadie”) Elizabeth Cameron on October 13. 1896, the youngest daughter of John Henry Cameron. Her father left his home in New Brunswick, Canada, for Marblehead in 1870 and worked in a shoe factory before switching to a job running a small railroad station. Otis and Sarah raised four children: Dorothy (1898-1938), Louise Cameron (1900-1994), Kenneth Thurber (1901-1979), and Evelyn Gladys (1909-1981). NEWLYWEDS TRAVEL TO CHINA AS MISSIONARIES I found the most interesting branch of this family to be Dorothy, our 1st cousin 2X removed, and her husband. At the age of 22, she graduated from Jackson College and married a Baptist missionary, Reverend Chester Frank Wood (1892-1961), on August 3, 1920. Seventeen days after the wedding, the newlyweds left on the SS China from San Francisco to live for six years as missionaries in Yachow, China. Their oldest two daughters, Elizabeth Shaw (1921-2011) and Carolyn Margaret (1923-1991) were both born in China. Dorothy was well-known in her community for her lectures on her experiences in China. Rev. Wood was born in Woburn, Massachusetts, and attended Colby College before entering Newton Theological Institution to earn his Bachelor of Divinity degree in 1917. He then took graduate courses at Harvard to receive his master’s degree in Sacred Theology in 1927 after returning from his stint in China. He returned to Harvard to study psychology in 1937-1938. On May 25, 1917, Rev. Wood registered for the draft during World War I, but requested a deferment because he was a theology student at the time. His father, Arthur Gould Wood, worked as a baggage master at the railroad for eighteen years. As he pushed a wheelbarrow next to the tracks during a storm, he was blown onto the tracks and run over by a train that severed both his legs. He died on January 4, 1913. A biography published in a Colby College doesn’t mention either Dorothy or their children, but Chester traveled extensively throughout North America, Europe, and the Far East and wrote many articles on the latest world events. He was a direct descendant of William Brewster, an Elder with the Pilgrims who arrived in Plymouth in 1620. Chester and Sarah returned to China to serve as missionaries from 1930-1937. Their third child, Robert Brewster (1926-1997), was born in Newton, Massachusetts, but the youngest, Richard Chester (1932-2010) arrived during the family’s second stint in China where he learned Chinese as his first language. He earned a fine arts degree and was a painter and printmaker, a soloist in many church choir groups, and an actor in musical and drama productions in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. He was a veteran of the Korean War. Dorothy died on November 10, 1938, in Marblehead at the age of forty. Chester remarried Reverend Lydia Elizabeth Whipple (1911-1965) in Croyden, New Hampshire, on May 3, 1942. Lydia and Chester are buried together in Cambridge, Massachusetts. From February 6:
It’s been really cold here in Northern Ohio and we have about 3 feet of snow on the ground after Thursday’s blizzard here. How many more days are there until spring? Thought I would share one of my favorite comfort food recipes from Donna Goins. Stay warm! Still lots of snow on the ground here, but, hopefully, spring isn’t too far off. Just a quick entry on our 6th great grandfather on the Shaw branch of the family from the Dictionary of National Biography. He lived in the Scottish Highlands of Inverness and was quite a learned man and minister.
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Bonnie EastonHi! I am a Jones cousin, daughter of Evelyn Jones Easton. Since retiring as a reference librarian after 20 years, I have become a genealogy addict. Our ancestors want to tell us their stories.
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