The new year is now upon us, and in the spirit of its promise of renewal and rebirth, I have set about again to get the Holsenbecks and Gillhams involved in the remembrances project I set up last month. The holidays are hectic and it is admittedly not easy to find free time to sit down and reminisce. It's rather ironic that at the very time that one is surrounded by family, it's not easy to actually write down what one remembers -- it is a time to be making family history, not recording it.
Hopefully, though, with the new year some of us can take the time in the dead of winter to extract some thoughts and put them on the computer. Initially I had narrowed the field to just Mother Cile and Pop, to give everyone a specific topic to write about. I have gotten several responses and I have duly gathered them into a growing file. This January I will continue to collect things about the couple, so those of you with memories long enough to remember Mother Cile and Pop, please drop a line to the blog email or my email.
In December I was able to complete the Letters from Japan correspondence between William T. and Frances H. Gillham. Every day a new letter will be posted on the website, so please take a look at it when you can, and, as always, everyone is welcome (nay, encouraged) to leave a comment. If you run into trouble trying to leave a comment, don't despair: you can always email me a comment. Just be sure to reference the specific letter, and I will make sure it gets posted among the other comments on the blog. The Letters to Japan should be fully posted by the end of January.
Since I started the Letters blog back in 2010, I have updated the blog software that Google offers, and I am now able to track the blog in ways I never thought possible. I can now see exactly how many times a particular post was accessed and in which country the user was located, and which search source he used. Not surprisingly, I found that the single most popular post was William T. Gillham's letter about his trip to Hiroshima. That letter is quite historic in many ways, beyond even our family history. In fact, as you will find out soon in the Letters, Frances Gillham typed up the letter and sent it to the Southern Bell Telephone Company (William Gillham's former employer), which in turn published it in one of their newsletters. Of the over 3,300 hits on my blog, a full third were for this letter. Here is a quick link to his Hiroshima letter.
My other accomplishment in December was the research of the Gillham lineage and the updating of the Gillham family tree. Here are some of the more interesting discoveries I have made:
1. Although we normally think of William T. Gillham's lineage as being Irish (because of the Irish name Gillham), many of his lines actually lead back to Germany. Thomas Newton Gillham, the son of the original Thomas Gillham from Ireland, moved to Illinois, which, like most states in the Midwest, had been settled by German immigrants. Subsequent generations of Gillhams married Germans, including one of the so-called "Pennsylvania Dutch" that came over from the Palatinate region (near Heidelberg) in the early 1700s.
2. I have determined where Thomas Gillham, the American primogenitor of the Gillham family, is buried. With William T. Gillham, I visited the site of Thomas Gillham's son's burial, at the Wanda Cemetery near Edwardsville, Illinois, but my grandfather was never certain as to the burial place of Thomas himself. Records show that Thomas Gillham was buried at the Bullock Creek Cemetery in York County, South Carolina, about halfway between Spartanburg and Rock Hill.
3. The name Gillham is actually an early anglicized version of the Norman (i.e., early French) name Guillaume, which means William. The name William is derived from the Germanic Wilhelm, so the name Gillham came to England via France and thus underwent the transmutation. In short, Gillham means William, so my grandfather's name is actually William William, and Bill Middleton and his son Gillham in fact have the same name.
This month, January, I will be finishing up my research into the lineage of the Gillhams and the Holsenbecks and posting them on the website. I will be using the new 2012 version of Family Tree Maker, which will allow me to create a family tree graphic that can be easily transferred to our site. Since the tree will be way too large for a single page, I will make the tree interactive, with links to earlier family lines from the "root" tree of Mother Cile and Pop and their parents. Eventually I hope to make most of the names clickable with links to biographical sketches and photos.
I will also update the form and style of the website itself, and you should notice the new changes by early next week. As always, any feedback you have on the website is greatly appreciated.
Hopefully, though, with the new year some of us can take the time in the dead of winter to extract some thoughts and put them on the computer. Initially I had narrowed the field to just Mother Cile and Pop, to give everyone a specific topic to write about. I have gotten several responses and I have duly gathered them into a growing file. This January I will continue to collect things about the couple, so those of you with memories long enough to remember Mother Cile and Pop, please drop a line to the blog email or my email.
In December I was able to complete the Letters from Japan correspondence between William T. and Frances H. Gillham. Every day a new letter will be posted on the website, so please take a look at it when you can, and, as always, everyone is welcome (nay, encouraged) to leave a comment. If you run into trouble trying to leave a comment, don't despair: you can always email me a comment. Just be sure to reference the specific letter, and I will make sure it gets posted among the other comments on the blog. The Letters to Japan should be fully posted by the end of January.
Since I started the Letters blog back in 2010, I have updated the blog software that Google offers, and I am now able to track the blog in ways I never thought possible. I can now see exactly how many times a particular post was accessed and in which country the user was located, and which search source he used. Not surprisingly, I found that the single most popular post was William T. Gillham's letter about his trip to Hiroshima. That letter is quite historic in many ways, beyond even our family history. In fact, as you will find out soon in the Letters, Frances Gillham typed up the letter and sent it to the Southern Bell Telephone Company (William Gillham's former employer), which in turn published it in one of their newsletters. Of the over 3,300 hits on my blog, a full third were for this letter. Here is a quick link to his Hiroshima letter.
My other accomplishment in December was the research of the Gillham lineage and the updating of the Gillham family tree. Here are some of the more interesting discoveries I have made:
1. Although we normally think of William T. Gillham's lineage as being Irish (because of the Irish name Gillham), many of his lines actually lead back to Germany. Thomas Newton Gillham, the son of the original Thomas Gillham from Ireland, moved to Illinois, which, like most states in the Midwest, had been settled by German immigrants. Subsequent generations of Gillhams married Germans, including one of the so-called "Pennsylvania Dutch" that came over from the Palatinate region (near Heidelberg) in the early 1700s.
2. I have determined where Thomas Gillham, the American primogenitor of the Gillham family, is buried. With William T. Gillham, I visited the site of Thomas Gillham's son's burial, at the Wanda Cemetery near Edwardsville, Illinois, but my grandfather was never certain as to the burial place of Thomas himself. Records show that Thomas Gillham was buried at the Bullock Creek Cemetery in York County, South Carolina, about halfway between Spartanburg and Rock Hill.
3. The name Gillham is actually an early anglicized version of the Norman (i.e., early French) name Guillaume, which means William. The name William is derived from the Germanic Wilhelm, so the name Gillham came to England via France and thus underwent the transmutation. In short, Gillham means William, so my grandfather's name is actually William William, and Bill Middleton and his son Gillham in fact have the same name.
This month, January, I will be finishing up my research into the lineage of the Gillhams and the Holsenbecks and posting them on the website. I will be using the new 2012 version of Family Tree Maker, which will allow me to create a family tree graphic that can be easily transferred to our site. Since the tree will be way too large for a single page, I will make the tree interactive, with links to earlier family lines from the "root" tree of Mother Cile and Pop and their parents. Eventually I hope to make most of the names clickable with links to biographical sketches and photos.
I will also update the form and style of the website itself, and you should notice the new changes by early next week. As always, any feedback you have on the website is greatly appreciated.
I never knew that Gillham was Irish! All these years I thought it was French. Now I learn it is not only Irish, but German too.
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