What might Enos Reeves and Andrew Jackson have in common?

Having finally arrived in Charleston on Sunday, I've turned right around and left again this dreary Tuesday morning!  It's OK, I will return to my "home town" (a term which takes on more and more significance daily) of Charleston on Thursday.  This slight detour is occasioned by the visit of an old friend who is "conferencing" in Columbia, SC and has asked me to join her for the non-conference portions of her visit.  We haven't seen each other in over 12 years, so how could I refuse?!  As a bonus, I will awaken my neglected Nikon and visit my favorite zoo, Riverbanks, tomorrow, and a new treat, Pearl Fryar's Topiary Garden, on the way back on Thursday.  

The great excitement this week has been the contact Aaron has made with some cousins from Georgia and Arizona--cousins we knew nothing about until just a few days ago, and who have decades of research under their belts regarding Grandpa Reeves' family of origin.  James Longstreet Sibley Jennings (I love it!) and Ellen Williams Crawford have already proved to possess a wealth of information, and have shown themselves to be generous and forthcoming with all of it!  Aaron has been in touch with both, and I have made contact with Sib, as he is known, and have written to Ellen but have yet to hear back from her.

Sib is so comfortable and connected with the myriad ancestors we have only just found, that he actually calls them Aunt and Uncle, though they died centuries before he was born!  I am beginning to see the next weeks, months and years as a journey through a succulent forest of undiscovered fruits...Avatar comes to mind (and if you haven't seen it, you must!).  It's both enticing and unnerving to begin this journey, which I know will be frustrating at times, mind-numbing at others and, ultimately, joyous and delicious!  The best part of all this for me is an opportunity to work closely with Aaron on something about which we are both passionate!

Don't worry, I haven't forgotten the title of this entry, but I'm only going to give a hint now, until we've done a bit more digging to see if we can find the truth.  It has to do with the very famous portrait artist of the 19th century, Thomas Sully...

To come:  Who is buried in Matthew Sully Reeves' tomb?

Fast Forward to 2011

The Circular Congregational Church
Charleston, SC

Solomon Legare's headstone in the
 Circular Church Graveyard

As it is impossible to speak of genealogy without jumping back and forth in time and space, I will take this opportunity to leap forward and set the stage for what has us so excited approximately 20 years after those initial interviews.


Twenty years ago, Ancestry.com and other websites like it were just glimmers in some genealogist's eye, so accessing information about ancestors beyond what was still fresh in our grandparents' memories was something of a pipe dream.  Gathering records in those days meant contacting the Mormon Church in Utah or Ellis Island Immigration and hoping that someone had the time to go through microfilm documents.  It was often more difficult than finding that silly needle in the haystack, and much more time consuming.


I did join Ancestry for a brief time when I first became aware of it in the mid-90s, but records at that time were by no means complete and it was more frustrating than worthwhile.  Most of what I could cull from the site was information I had already gotten from my parents and grandmother (however grudgingly).


Gleanings were meager in the 80s and 90s, and it was hard to hold the interest of members of my family when most of the information I found was information we already knew.  Today, all that has changed.  Significant information is now available on many genealogical websites, with people all over the world sharing and adding information daily.  It has gotten to the point that, in many cases, there is almost too much information!  The cataloging of relationships and interrelationships is mind-boggling in the extreme.  Fortunately, most sites provide plenty of interactive visual aids, without which, I would be totally lost!




Sometime in October of 2011, Aaron asked me if I knew the provenance of the name of my maternal grandfather, Sullie Reeves Sherrard.  All I knew at the time was that he was named for his own maternal grandfather, Sullie Reeves Benton.  Because my grandfather's mother, Odessa Benton Sherrard, died in childbirth when he was born, I doubt that he had much information about his namesake beyond that fact.

Aaron pointing out Solomon Legare's tiny headstone

Aaron surprised me with the information that he had actually discovered the derivation of Grandpa's name, and he was very excited to tell me that the earliest Reeves to whom he could link Grandpa Reeves was a man named Enos Reeves.  The excitement of this discovery was multiplied many times over by the fact that Enos Reeves was married to Amey Legare, granddaughter of one Solomon Legare, known in genealogical data as "The Huguenot, Solomon Legare," a name well known to both Aaron and myself as that of one of the earliest citizens of Charleston, SC!  The name Legare (pronounced Legree) is one of the more ubiquitous "Charleston names," and anyone who spends more than a day in the city learns of the Legare name by way of Legare Street, Legare Farms or some of the dozens of Legare headstones in many cemeteries around town.


Upon further investigation over the past several weeks, Aaron has developed a complete family tree directly linking Solomon Legare with Grandpa Reeves!  That tree includes many fascinating and stunning surprises which I will detail here over the coming months.


Teaser:  What might Enos Reeves and Andrew Jackson have in common?

In The Beginning...trying to get blood out of a turnip!

Reeves, Shirlye and Bertha, circa 1927

Sometime around 1989 (the coincidence of the year, around the time we moved to Charleston, SC, will become clear later) I had a sudden yearning to know more about my family history. I had always been interested in past generations, and, in fact, keeping track of what, I now know, was the bare tip of the family tree came very easily to me. I could always draw family trees in my head, even as a youngster understanding the whole "third cousin, twice removed" generational mapping code. But now I wanted more. I wanted to know how they lived, where they came from and who their parents and great-great-great grandparents were. I wanted to understand what it felt like to elope with someone your parents mightily disapproved of, to be cut off by your family for marrying out of the faith, to decide when the time was right to uproot your entire family after hundreds of years in one part of the world and move them half-way around the world to a land of new, if as yet unknown, opportunities.

Bertha and Reeves, circa 1950

I made up my mind to track down some answers!  The first thing I did was take my then 85-year-old maternal grandmother, Bertha Goldsmith Sherrard, out to breakfast, equipped with a tiny voice-activated tape recorder and a list of questions about her own early life. Every time I mentioned to her that I wanted to know more about her life as a child, or her decision to elope with my grandfather, Sullie Reeves Sherrard, which held great romantic fascination for me, or what it was like to live in the era of flappers and speakeasies, all she would say was "It was a long time ago," or "That's not important anymore." So when I took the recorder out of my purse and tried to surreptitiously slip it behind the salt and pepper shakers on the tiny table at Le Peep, Grandma immediately became suspicious. "What is that? If that's a tape recorder, you can just put that thing away right now! I'm not talking into any tape recorder!" she fairly screeched. For someone who rarely uttered more than six words in a row, always in an almost inaudible tone, this was quite a diatribe! I tried in vain to cajole her into answering just a few questions, telling her how important it was to me to try to understand where we all came from and how my ancestors lived. Her only response was to clam up good and tight! There had never been any doubt where the stubborn streak in my mother's family came from!

Grandpa Sullie Reeves Sherrard and Janice, circa 1950

Of course, I asked my mother what she knew, but she wasn't terribly helpful. After all, she didn't live through it and everything she "knew" was hearsay...really gossip...from her aunts, my grandmother's sisters, Selma and Roslyn Goldsmith, and the snippets that would creep out from time to time when Mama was growing up.  As it turns out, much of what Mama "knew" is not borne out by research, but I must say it made for some interesting stories!  More about those later!

A couple of years later, after settling into our new home in Charleston, my parents and grandmother came to visit us.  I had been talking with a congregant about his new video camera (he was our first acquaintance to own one) and it came to me that perhaps this was a way to record some genealogical information and stories from my parents, Sol and Shirlye Maurine Sherrard Wald, as well as from Grandma Bertha.  My idea was that since my husband, Edward Marc Friedman, had been Grandma's rabbi before he married her granddaughter (me!), she would have a much harder time refusing to talk with him about her past.  Also, with my parents there, encouraging her and helping to fill in the blanks--and sharing their own stories--she might not be as intimidated by the equipment I would be wielding...admittedly much more imposing than my pocket recorder!


So, we borrowed the video camera and sat the three Elders down on the couch in our den, with Ed ensconced on the love seat in Interviewer Mode.  I was right, as it turned out, that Grandma would open up to her former rabbi, and, in fact, we now have about six hours of interviews with Grandma, Daddy and Mama.  Priceless, especially since Grandma and Mama are no longer with us.

Panda, Janice, Reeves and Dave, circa 1953

To come: Fast Forward to 2011