Sepia Saturday - Hunting Mutts

Sepia Saturday: Theme - Dogs.

   This is my Smith family at their homestead in Hiawatha, Schoolcraft County in the upper peninsula of Michigan. The photo was given to me by one of AJ's other great grandchildren.  I love this picture!
   I'm guessing the dogs in the picture are sitting by their own owners.  Quite a mixture of mutts for hunting dogs! (If that's what they did indeed use them for.) The first on the left looks like a terrier mix belonging to Ray Allen Smith, a great great uncle. The next pup is at the feet of my great grandfather, A.J. Smith. The last one is sitting between the legs of my great-great grandfather, Adoniram Judson Smith (Aka, A.J.) who was Sheriff of Schoolcraft County about the time this picture was taken.
   All the pups look pretty relaxed for their photo shoot, except maybe Adoniram Judson's dog. It sort of looks like he's trapping him to make him stay in place. lol.      

 

The next is just a bonus picture of my Dad when he was a boy. I actually think this is the dog that has a pretty tragic boyhood story attached to it, and I believe it was his first dog. 

Don't you think he's raging coolness in his highwaters and skinny turtleneck? :P

      

Smith&Smith

                                                               My Great Great Granny

 

   Ida Harriet Smith - b. 5 Sep 1856 d. 5 Aug 1936

I reached a little confusion a while back when I had a lot of documents on my Mother's Maternal Great grandparents, but for the life of me, I could not come up with a maiden name for my mom's great grandma.
    We knew my grandma's father was A.J Smith. We also knew his father was Adoniram Judson Smith. In fact, I had so much on the Smith's I was back to the 1700's. But I could not figure out what Adoniram Judson's wife Ida's maiden name was. Be it Marriage return records, Death returns, cemetery records.... All I got was Smith. It wasn't until a death record when the thought occurred to me.... Is her maiden name also Smith? In Hiawatha, Michigan? This tiny tiny place? I admit it; Thoughts of first cousins marrying each other immediately popped into my brain. (For the record, I always tend to think the worst.....) but, Eww. I was hoping I was wrong.
   Whew! I was.
 I was able to get in touch with a half 3rd cousin who had an article that had been printed in the local newspaper up there about the Smith's. Ahem, excuse me, the "Extraordinary Smiths." (Hey, I'm not bragging, it's what the article said!)  :)  And it was confirmed then by the descendants... they were absolutely positively from separate Smith lines. Well Thank God!!!    ...and then I was embarrassed it didn't dawn on me earlier that her maiden name was probably Smith. Duh. But I digress....

     So here I am now, with my lovely great great grandmother, Ida Harriet Smith, b. 1856. I have found that her parents are Charles Smith, and Mary Reynolds. Charles' parents are Charles Smith and Laura G.(I assume it's a G, the handwriting was unclear) King. And there I stop. I can find nothing on Laura or Charles so far.

      I've reached out and got a response from ANOTHER distant cousin (The genealogy community is wonderful, have I mentioned that?) who happened to be a professional genealogist and is having a tricky time sorting out Ida's Smith line....uh oh. I'm no where near a professional.... how on earth am I going to get anywhere on this? But this cousin informed me they've had a lot of luck finding these Smith's in Google Books. (and have I mentioned yet how much I love Google Books and the gems of info I've found with it? I have to do a separate blog post on that....) I've tried looking for her Smith's with GB, but came back with nothing. I think I'll try some different combinations of info for the searches and see what I get. At least it's confirmed that it's out there.... I just have to dig it up. Wish me luck!!



The picture of Ida above was given to me for my records by a half 3rd cousin I've found in my Smith searchings. He's been a wonderful help when it came to exchanging information and pictures of the Smith family. Thanks Paul!

Surprise! Response from distant Billings cousin

     One thing I love about the genealogy community is the sense of "community". Everyone is always willing to give another researcher a hand. A perpetual pay it forward kind of  group of people. I heart them. <3
    

     I plan on making a "Family History" wall in our living room. Portraits of people and occasionally places. I've been spending time picking photos, searching for others, and fixing them up in Lightroom so I can get them printed. I had none of print quality from the Billings line. (My mother's biological paternal line).
     So I was on the hunt. I went back to the OP of the digital pictures I had found of some Billings grandparents. I didn't want to be a pest, but I explained my need for portraits, and asked if she possibly had the original size scans she could email me. There's a lot of people on ancestry.com who really "aren't on" ancestry.com anymore. I figured this would be no different, but it was worth a shot! I clicked send and figured that would be the last of it. Some time passed. Nothing new. Forgot about it.

    Sometime after I was looking for a different email in my inbox, so I typed "genealogy" in the inbox search to try and locate it. Low and behold, there was the reply to my Billings' picture request. I saw the little paperclip icon.....there were attachments.... then the excitement just boiled over. My husband had to, like any good husband of course, come see what was wrong with me, and why I was bouncing and making all these strange noises. Possibly he feared his beloved wife had become an epileptic. Maybe I spilled my coffee on the computer and had electrocuted myself? No. None of the above. I had just gotten a huge picture load of dead relatives. And I was very...VERY.... excited.

    This wonderful woman had sent me the original scans of the pictures I had seen. And not only that, but she attached others that I had never seen before and some genealogy of her family to add to my tree.... How grateful I was!!! Panic set in when I thought of how I had missed that email, and only found it among the hundreds because it happened to have the word "genealogy" somewhere in it. I was searching for something else. I had no idea it had arrived... a while ago.....and I made a resolution to clean out my inbox and check my email more often.....

    Some of the pictures she included in that email were awesome. My favorite happened to be.....

A picture of the Billing brothers, sons of Henri Billings (b.17Mar1839/d.1Jun1908), goofing off. 

  It's the little details I love in pictures like this. Things like the pipe, the hat sitting casually on the head, or the sleeves of the dress shirt rolled up... I'm a sucker for old pictures.

   At first I assumed the two were dancing. Then I thought, what peculiar thing are they staging here with two boys dancing, one timing it with his pocket watch and the other two exchanging money? hmmm. 

Ok, So they probably weren't dancing. 

I'm not sure from the picture who's who, but based on the look of their ages, one of them is probably  my great great grandfather, Arthur Billings,  (b.14Mar1867/d.31Dec1926).

         The family of Henri Billings has a colorful history involving many different places, both in the U.S., and in Canada. The email I received speaks of how Henry and his 8 children left Canada, and moved to Manistique, Schoolcraft, MI during the logging boom that took place there in 1887.  He settled in Manistique for a while, where his children were encouraged to become skilled in different trades. My great great grandfather, Arthur became a painter. Henry E a carpenter, Antoine a printer. And Henry Billings Sr himself along with his two sons Onesime and George became bakers. Two of his children were married and stayed in Manistique; Emma in 1889 and Arthur in 1890. Both siblings remained there the remainder of their lives.

         Their father Henry, though, left Manistique with Marguerite, and their children Onesime, Felix, Antoine and Henry, and went back to Granby in Canada around 1894. George did not accompany the family on this move, and chose to remain in Manistique with his brother Arthur.

          At 57 years of age, Henry bought a two story home in Rue Principale. He moved his family into the second story and used the first story to open his own bakery, H Billings Bread & Pastry Co. His sons took part in the family business often making deliveries in the Billings delivery cart. The trade of Baking remained in the Billings family for several generations.

 Above: H. Billings Bread Pastry Co.

I'm so grateful to the researchers that have come down these lines before me, and their willingness to share their research and treasures. There are a few family lines I have that have very little to no information to follow. It's a very hard road, and sometimes takes years to get a tiny tid bit fact that can open a few more doors and move you on to the next little bit. And sometimes that little bit opens the door to a whole wealth of information. but often the former rings truer. So my level of gratitude towards those wonderful family researchers that paved the way first, clearing out all the brush and debris, runs very very high. Thank You!