[Granville-Hough] 15 Mar 2009 - Sullivan genealogy

[Trustees and Executors for Granville W. Hough]

I am going to Aliso Niguel High School to see 
and hear Faron and Julie Shepard's oldest son Ryan compete in his high 
school percussion band.  This high school was built in a beautiful 
meadow along a creek where Carol and I used to walk.  We saw our first 
cattle egrets there, and there were other unusual birds that had worked 
their way up the creek from the ocean.  The start of the trail was 
across the street from where Jerry Miller saw his first tumbleweed.  The 
area had four big barley farms where the city of Aliso Viejo was built. 
I have never been to the high school, but I will see what it is like today.
	I am enclosing a 2002/03 exchange of letters between me and Maxine 
Watts and me on the Sullivan project.  I got started on it soon afterward.

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Maxine Watts wrote:

> I am sending to you some material for you to look at and maybe give me
> some ideas as to how to go about putting together.  I don't know
> anyone else, as Elizabeth is legally blind, and i am so sorry about
> that. What I am sending is material I have gathered over the years.  I
> am good at gathering facts, but not arranging, etc, which you are good
> at. I am keeping a copy of everything I am  sending.  Uncle Tom said
> when I put this together I could use anything in his book, like Smith
> County history, etc. Much of this material came from Mama, Grandma
> Sullivan whom I grew up around until I was grown, and I tried to
> listen to everything that was said. I have a copy of the Zion Hill
> Church minutes, beginning with the organization in 1851.  I am
> sending a page (hand written), as there are over l00 pages, more or
> less.  Also, a copy is typewritten from some of the other pages, and you
> would be interested.  It is typed exactly as it was recorded, included
> errors, etc. I need HELP. Hope your family is o k and Carol is o
> k. Maxine

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Granville:

     I noted your request for acid free paper, via the Smith County
folks.  The place where I go to get my supplies is OfficeMax, a big
national chain.  My branch states they have it in stock on the floor.
Next time I visit, I will look at it.
     If they have it, then any office supply place should be able to
special order it.  Now, there is likely an office supply place where
there is a community college, maybe Picayune or Slidell,  certainly in
Hattiesburg or Gulfport.
     I could buy it here and send it to you, but that would be an
expensive bunch of paper.
     Yes, send the Sullivan and Zion Hill information along at your
convenience.
     I'm hearing strange stories about the Sullivans, even more strange
than I heard in my youth.
     It reminds me of a story I once saw depicted on "Believe It or Not,"
if you remember those stories in the newspapers of our youth.  It seems
there is also a Sullivan's Hollow in Sullivan County, New York, about 50
miles from New York City.  A journalist travelling through the
contryside noted the general backwardness of the communities and began
asking the question: "Please, sir, can you tell me anything about
Manhattan, in New York City?" to which he got the same reply all day.
"Never heard of it!!"  That people fifty miles away had never heard of
Manhattan merited a "Believe It or Not" coverage in the 1930 decade.
     The Sullivans of Smith County are not that reserved.  Some will give
you an answer, even if it is one made up on the spot.  So, if you ask:
"Where did hog Tom Sullivan come from?" you will get an answer which
satisfies
the answerer if not the questioner.  It may not be geographically or
historically impossible, but the answerer does not know or even care about
that.  If you question the answer, the answerer will say, as I often
heard in my youth, "Oh, I have that on good authority."
     Well, we should set some of the record straight, that is, we might
try to be someone's "good authority" in future generations.  Those
presently off on some fantasy trip will stay there to their dying day,
so we can only work on the future.
     Sincerely, Granville..

P. S. I was able to organize the information into five volumes, stopping
with the 1930 census for security reasons when I did not find death
records after that date.  I worked on the project for four years, and
added census information Maxine did not have available.  Maxine has the
copyrights and is publishing the volumes in different ways.  In a future
letter, I will give the information for obtaining copies.

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From: Tom Richardson <Tomr3 at comcast.net>
Subject: Re: Sullivan genealogy - 15 Mar 2009
Date: Sun, 15 Mar 2009 20:22:22 -0400

	I read these stories and recollections of the Cole, Richardson,  
Sullivan and related families with some interest.  It is interesting  
to get an idea of where our family came from, what they did and, in  
general, "who they were / we are".  The comment by Rachel Craft  
Perkins that "Several families from Ireland, including Sullivan,  
Cole, Hester, went to the Cayman Islands and thence to Natchez." is  
interesting.

	I have nothing to add genealogy wise as I have not done any of the  
research into these interesting characters that we are descended  
from.  However, I do have a bit of knowledge of the Cayman Islands as  
my parents, Tom and Veda Richardson, own a condominium on Grand  
Cayman and I have visited them in Cayman every winter for the past 20  
years (we just returned from Cayman yesterday).  Today the Cayman  
Islands are a British colony and are known as a center for off-shore  
banking, beach front condos and resorts, scuba diving and cruise ship  
stops.  It was not always this way.

	The Cayman Islands are "in the middle of know where", not on the way  
to anywhere, have no natural resources,  almost no fresh water,  
terrible soil for farming, no useful timber, no commercial fishing  
and no good harbors.  In short, until the 1960's there was no good  
reason to go there.  The Cayman people, as with all groups of people,  
are proud of their heritage.  They also manage to manipulate that  
heritage to appeal to the tourist trade.  Five groups of people  
settled the Cayman Islands over the past 500 years: pirates,  
convicts, escaped convicts, escaped slaves and, in general, people  
that needed to avoid civilized society.  So, the obvious question is  
why did some of our decedents go from Ireland or where ever to a  
place with no resources and a bad reputation?  One can only  
speculate...  Perhaps they were not given much of a choice.  After a  
short stay in Cayman perhaps they "escaped" to Natchez.

	Also of interest is the book I just read, "Undaunted Courage: M.  
Lewis, T. Jefferson and the Opening of the West" by Steven Ambrose.   
In 1820 "The West" was all land west of the Appalachian Mountains,  
this would include the new state of Mississippi (1817).  In this time  
period anti-British sentiment was strong and coming to the more  
remote regions of the new anti-British United States probably  
appealed to these homeless Irishmen.  The book contains several  
comments about the availability of land and the frequent settling of  
land by squatting, counterfeit deeds, counterfeit grants and so on.    
This might have appealed to people that found themselves in a barren,  
inhospitable place like Cayman.  In 1803 millions of acres of land  
became part of the United States due to the huge Louisiana Purchase.   
Due in part to more pressing matters, such as the War of 1812 and  
politics in Washington, government presence and the rule of law was  
slow to get established west of the Appalachian Mountains.

	Some where in the book there is also a comment that the British  
people would rather live with the Indians than with the Irish, not  
particularly flattering toward our ancestors from Ireland since most  
British and Americans considered the Indians to be inferior savages.   
"Politically correct" had not been invented yet.

	It would be interesting to know how and why our people got from the  
old world to the new world.  Unfortunately those details are probably  
unrecorded and lost in the fog of history and legend.

	If you got to Cayman today you will see plenty of pirates.  Mostly  
they sell tee shirts and jewelry to tourists.  Some of them wear ties  
and operate the 280 banks and 10,000+ hedge funds that exist in this  
country of 52,000 people.

Tom Richardson 3rd
Durham, NH