In this section of Yusmith I plan to archive scans of various family documents that, for the most part Lori has and are from a collection of stuff that Dad had when he died. Most of the items come from Dad’s sister Martha and from his brother Ray. There are some old letters, old pictures, and various newspaper clippings. The general organization will to be split things into Smith (my dads side) and Nixon (my moms side).
While going through these items I found that our family has one slightly unusual piece of data. Not Guinness Record unusual just plain unusual. Occasionally in the paper you see a picture of a group that represent 5 or 6 generations of a family. There is the infant, the 18ish mom, the mid 30’s grandmother, the mid 50’s great grandmother, the 70 ish great great grand mother and a late 80’s to 90 triple great grand mother. Now mom and dad were both the youngest of large families but what I didn’t know was that Grandma Marchant was also the youngest of a large family. Dads side was similar . Here is a handy visual aid.
While in the example above those folks were able to cram 6 generations into about 90 years starting with Greyson it would take us about 188.
Going beyond the chart above for the Nixon side from some of the information I’ll post we can trace back to about 1759 and some history with no details before that. As noted the family was originally from England but moved to Ireland maybe sometime around 1700 (since they were Quakers maybe because of religious persecution). In 1759 three brothers moved from Ireland (where they were shipbuilders) and located in Loudoun County Virginia. Our direct descendant was George Nixon the youngest brother born in Ireland in 1730. His son George married Anna Cravens and lived in Loudoun Co. This family was 5 boys and 2 girls. William Nixon the third oldest (March 20, 1787 – April 12,1859) was the grandfather of Joseph Nixon in the chart above. He was born in Loudoun Co. VA and moved to Columbia Co Ohio in 1812 5 years after being married and after the birth of their first 2 children. The second oldest John Nixon was born the year before moving to Ohio in May of 1811 and became the father of Joseph above. He died in 1887.
William Nixon lived in Ohio for about 24 years and then moved to Jefferson Twp. Jay county Indiana. There was a group of families that moved into Jay County at this time one being the William Hite family that included Emeline that later married Joseph. As a side note William Hite opened the first tavern in New Mt. Pleasent, a story for telling on Grandma Marchant’s page. This history, in more detail, can be found on pages 5-7 of the large genealogy file on the Nixon page. On page 12 of this file is a short history of Joseph.
The Smith side is not as well documented with anything we have. In fact all we have are a couple letters that Aunt Pickle transcribed that were sent after WW2 to my grandfather. Alexander was born in Newmill, Keith, Banffshire Scotland. His father George Smith was a blacksmith and died about 1875 when he went back into a burring shop to get documents. Alexander’s wife (the one that gave birth to my grandfather) Margaret Howie was the daughter of Robert Howie (Feb 1819 Ayrshire Scotland- Oct 1890 Palmyra Mo.) and Anna Dunlop (April 1825 Paisley, Renfrewshire Scotland – 1910 Palmrya Mo.) She married Alex May 1877. She died in 1886 as did the youngest of their 4 children. My grandfather was the third child born in 1880.