Category: Radcliff
Elmer Radcliff is the father of Wannita Carroll, connecting the Radcliff family to a main branch of my family tree
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January 30, the day of the birth of my Grandma and the day of the death of her Grandma
Today would have been Grandma Carroll’s 108th birthday. It’s easy math for me as she was 50 years and 5 days older than me. It’s also the anniversary of her grandma’s death. My 2x great grandma, Nancy Hendricks, died on this day in 1967, one year before I was born. I’ve written a few different…… Read more
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US Presidents in my Family Tree
By connecting your family tree to the giant family tree on Family Search . com you can see how you’re related to all sorts of famous people from history. Some of the connections are iffy, but I found several that seem likely, including more than 2 dozen US presidents: Twenty one are via the Starr…… Read more
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Solving the Kearney mystery, how refugees from Northern Ireland settled in the heartland of Illinois
My maternal grandfather’s grandmother was Mary Kearney. She married Patrick Carroll in La Salle, Illinois in 1866 when she was 20 years old. Her married name then, was Mary Carroll, the same as my own mother’s given name. But finding her origins has been a bit of a journey. Mary and Patrick’s son, John T…… Read more
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Emma Fogle Reynolds
I have been trying to find the origins of my 3x great grandmother, Emma Reynolds since I joined ancestry . com. My cousin had put together a tree that I copied back when I first started my tree, but after a bit of digging it became clear the parentage of Emma wasn’t set. We knew…… Read more
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Pictures from her Sister
After the war my Grandma Carroll’s sister Ada married John Maehl and they moved out to Los Altos, California. Ada was the closest sister in age to Grandma, 5 years younger. She had joined the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service, a branch of the Naval Reserve) during the war and that’s where she…… Read more
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They Shared Birthdays but Not Much Else
July 9th is the birthday of two of my great grandmothers. On my father’s side, Margaret Evelyn Thompson Myers Hounihan, mother of Dad’s mom, was born 9 July 1903 in Roodhouse, Illinois and on my mother’s side, the mother of my maternal grandmother, Bessie Hendricks Radcliff, was also born on July 9th but seven years…… Read more
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Oak Grove
The house my grandparents bought in 1961, the same house my father lives in today, was once part of a small town called Oak Grove. Built on the highest point in McLean County, a ridge overlooking current day Carlock, Oak Grove became a bustling center of commerce at a time when transportation was literally bogged…… Read more
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Ray “Cotton” Radcliff lost in WW2
Memorial Day seems an apt day to write about my Grandma Carroll’s brother Cotton who was killed during WW2. Raymond Radcilff was born on the 13th of December 1920 in Mackinaw, Illinois. The fourth of Elmer and Bessie Radcliff’s 12 children, he had bright white/blond hair and was thus dubbed “Cotton” for the rest of…… Read more
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Bessie
Bessie Hendricks Radcliff, my maternal grandmother’s mother, died at the age of 35 on May 14th, 1935 after delivering her twelfth child in two decades. Because her husband Elmer was an abusive alcoholic and unfit to parent, her surviving eleven children were soon scattered to the wind. The newborn died, a still birth. Wannita who…… Read more
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Remembrance of family I never knew
Ancestry.com reminded me tomorrow, May 4th, marks the 128th anniversary of the date when John William Phillips married Ida Velleta Reynolds. These are the parents of Elmer Radcliff, my maternal grandmother’s father. It’s an odd thing to consider. Their marriage was very short lived. The family took the time to report the wedding in the…… Read more