A Castle, A Clan, and A Connection

Jim and Lynn at Urquhart Castle c. 1989

Sometimes a place calls us to it and we don’t learn for decades later why! 

For me, the place is Urquhart Castle on Loch Ness, close to Inverness Scotland. In 1988-89, my boyfriend (now husband), Jim and I studied our junior year abroad at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. In addition to our travels to Europe during winter break and around the UK during spring recess, we took day trips and long weekends organized by the exchange program. At least twice that year, we visited Urquhart Castle. I’m sure that the infamous Loch Ness was one reason, but a love of castles was another. 

The Castle

Urquhart Castle, like most castles in the UK, has a long and storied past. For those interested, please visit the official historic website. There are many beautiful photographs of the location, far better than my (over) 35 year old digitized photos can provide!

 

Sometime after we were married, we happened upon a vintage image of what we thought was Urquhart Castle. I think we found it on our trip back to Scotland in 1999. We didn’t get that far north on that trip to Scotland but we must have picked it up on our travels. We liked it enough to have it framed and it has been hanging prominently in our house on a kitchen wall for decades. In researching for this blog, I learned that the image is actually a copy of a vintage engraving from 1895 printed in a book called Souvenir of Scotland: Its Cities, Lakes, and Mountains One Hundred and Twenty Chomo Views. Who knew?!

The Clan

There was also a clan named Urquhart who resided in the region. Both Urquhart Castle and the Clan Urquart were named for the Celtic word “Airchart”, which is a region now called Cromarty, just about 25 miles north of Inverness. The research that I read suggests that the Clan Urquart was not affiliated with Urquhart Castle, they were both just named after Airchart. So maybe it was more of a draw to the area and not really the castle?

The Connection

About 10 years ago as I was investigating my great-grandmother (Cora Viola Orcutt–the one whose Irises I have in my yard), I learned that the name Orcutt is a version of Urquhart that shows up in America. My great-aunt, Helen Tubbs Judson (my genealogy angel), researched the Orcutt Family and identified who she thought was the immigrant. That was William Orcutt (1618-1693) and his wife Mary Lane (1646-1693). There is some question about Mary, as it seems he might have had more than one wife and possibly more than one wife named Mary. There is documentation, though, that they had a son named William in 1664 in Bridgewater, Plymouth, Massachusetts, where William died. William Orcutt was born in Fillongley, North Warwickshire Borough, Warwickshire, England. In some information I found, it appears that there were Orcutt’s who migrated to England before heading to the “new world”.

Why now?

Why did I have a renewed interest in Urquhart Castle and the Clan Urquhart? Well, as I was investigating lineage societies recently, I came across Clan Urquhart Association, a lineage society open to anyone who can trace their name back to an Urquhart, Orcutt (as well as Cromartie and Cromarty)! The one-time fee of $20 would get me a membership card, two newsletters a year, and invitations to international gatherings of the Clan. The organization was established in 1976 to help promote awareness and preserve the history and heritage of the Clan. There is still also a Chief of the Clan. I haven’t decided if I am going to try to join, but I may invest in some article of clothing with the Clan’s tartan, which I find quite appealing! And just maybe I will wear it sometime when I’m back in Scotland and visit my family’s long ago homeland near Urquhart Castle?

A Photo to Remember

What a great photo, right?!!

This photo was among my grandmother’s (Elizabeth Anna Leach Tubbs) photo collections. I’ve seen it on numerous occasions and although it is marked with “Tyler Family” in my grandmother’s handwriting on the back, that’s all I knew about it!

I had no idea if these people were related to my grandmother (thus me) or if it was just some random family.

I decided to colorize it using MyHeritage to see what it might have looked like in color.

Since I do love a challenge, I thought I would try to figure out who these children might be. I made some assumptions to get me started:

1. The surname of the 4 children was Tyler

2. The fashion of the children appear to be the 1920’s

3. My grandmother lived in Ypsilanti, Michigan in the late 1920’s

It actually didn’t take me that long to find a Tyler Family living in Ypsilanti in 1930. In the 1930 Census, a family of 6 were living at 215 Cross Street. Parents were Lewis H. and Linda C. Tyler. The four children were Janet L (18), Mary E (15), John F (13), and Virginia P (9). The ages and gender of the children seem to fit. In the 1920 Census, the family of 5 (Virginia wasn’t born yet) were living at the same location. Janet was about the same age as my Uncle Clay and Mary was the same age as my grandmother. My great-grandmother was an elementary school teacher in Ypsilanti, so it is also possible that she was one of these youngster’s teacher.

When I showed my husband, he said it is possible that this is the same family, but he wouldn’t definitively agree with me. Maybe the photo Tyler family didn’t live in Ypsilanti? So on to looking for more evidence.

As I was starting to investigate the children, I started with Mary Elizabeth Tyler who was about my grandmother’s age. I found that she married Jack Robinson Donohoe at age 21, in 1936 in Steuben, Indiana. My grandparents also were married in Steuben in 1935…it appears that was the place to go to elope during the 1930s. (I later found that her sister, Janet L, also was married in 1935 in Steuben, Indiana.) Jack was from a farming family in Caro, Michigan, so they moved there and he farmed. She lived until age 91 and he until 85 and had no children and I could find no photos of her.

I then turned my attention to Janet Louise Tyler and that’s where I hit pay dirt! In 1932, there was a Janet Louise Tyler was attending Michigan State Normal College (now Eastern Michigan University) from Ypsilanti and majoring in Fine Arts and part of the Normal Art Club. Here’s her photo (clearly she found a way to tame her hair). And I enlarged the original photo and I was pretty certain at that this was the same person. Interestingly, my uncle Clay was in the same year, so probably they knew each other from high school, although he studied history and mathematics.

Janet married Cornelius James Fox in Steuben in 1935 after they had both graduated from Michigan State Normal College, he studied mathematics and science and was the year behind Clay and Janet, which happened to be in the same year as Clay’s future wife, Vivian Lantz. Vivian was also part of the Normal Art Club in 1933 but Janet was graduated by then. Both women became teachers, although Vivian became full time at home when the children came along. 

An interesting fact is that in 1950, both couples were living in Nueces County, Texas about 38 miles from one another! I have no idea if they knew that at the time, but a very interesting coincidence. Janet continued to teach and contributed to Art Education in profound ways, including authoring a three-volume series Modular Art Education, teaching in the Art Education department at University of Houston, honored by the art education community as Texas Art Educator of the Year and inducted as a Distinguished Fellow of the TAEA (Texas Art Education Association). After retiring she co-founded CityArtWorks, a nonprofit children’s art program in Houston. Quite a remarkable person! She lived to be 99.

Did you see what Janet is holding? A camera.
Clearly the budding artist.

I found photos for the other two siblings. It’s a little harder to be convinced that they are the same people because they were younger in the photos, but I’m pretty convinced that these are in fact the same family. The three women all lived into their 90s and John lived to be 78. This is interesting to note because I came across a fascinating article in the Detroit Free Press on Feb. 14, 1915 in which a large photo of Janet (referred to as “baby doll”) as a young child announcing the birth of her sister, but also advertising that she has all 4 grandparents alive and 7 of her 8 GREAT-grandparents still alive–something not many people could have (or still now) boast to have. Clearly they had long-living genes.

This doesn’t answer why my grandmother had a photo of the Tyler children, but there must have been something special between the Leach’s and the Tyler’s! 

Or maybe you still have doubts that I identified the right people…and these are just some other Tyler’s in a completely different state…where there is snow…?

The Beauty of Community

Pardoning Board of the State of Michigan
under Gov. Geo. Bliss, c. 1903

 I love being a family historian because I love mysteries and uncovering new truths. I also enjoy being a part of a community helping one another in their own searches. In genealogy, we are taught to document and cite and compelled to do so (see Elizabeth Shown Mills book Evidence Explained or the Genealogy Standards).

It is good practice for one's own research–it’s a heck of a lot easier than having to go back years later and try to recreate how you know something is true or where an original photo might live–and you can’t help out the community if you don’t do it. When working with others, I keep excellent track but with my own family I do a so-so job and every January I find myself listing “Document and cite everything” among my New Year’s Resolutions so do better. Sometimes, just sometimes though, I do do it right.

Lansing State Journal
10 Jul 1903

In 2012, I shared the group photo of my husband’s great-great-grandfather Russel Ralph Pealer (1842-1919) with other board members (he’s 2nd from the right) on my Ancestry.com family tree and included (unbelievably!) in the notes section what was written on the back, “R. Holzhey, Photographer, Marquette, MI. Taken when on pardoning board under Geo.(sic) Bliss”. Russel was born in Columbia County, Pennsylvania, actually not too far from where we live now. Russel was a member of the 16th Pennsylvania Cavalry, known as “Gregg’s Cavalry” during the Civil War. After the war, he continued his study of the law and was admitted to the bar in Pennsylvania in 1867 and later that year to the bar in Michigan. He moved with his wife to Three Rivers, Michigan where he practiced law, became a Circuit Judge, and eventually served on the Pardoning Board for the State of Michigan. This photo was taken between 1901-1903, while he was serving on the board. 

R.R. Pealer c. 1865

Fast forward 8 years to August of 2020, I was contacted by two historians from the Netherlands and asked if I owned the original photograph. (Thanks to Jim’s Aunt AnnaMarie Breyfogle Austin, we inherited this among MANY wonderful photos of RR Pealer most dutifully identified by Jim’s grandmother Bertha DeBoer Breyfogle) The Dutch historians had found the photo while researching in Ancestry.com and they were interested not in any of the people in the photo but rather the photographer! They were writing a book about the photographer, Reimund Holzhey, who had quite an interesting life after immigrating to the United States from the Netherlands. Reimund, for unknown reasons, resorted to robbing stagecoach and train passengers in northern Michigan and Wisconsin during the late 1880s. During one such event in the summer of 1889, he shot a man (Adolph G. Fleischbein) who died the next day. A massive manhunt was created and he was eventually caught in Republic, Michigan in the fall of 1889. He was sentenced to life in prison and sent to Marquette prison in the Upper Peninsula. 

He was a difficult prisoner until 1893 when he underwent surgeries related to a childhood brain injury and was completely transformed as a result. He became a model prisoner in Marquette and developed a passion for reading and photography!  The rest is history, as they say, and although I can’t read the book they produced and I own a copy (it’s written in Dutch), I can appreciate that I have helped to contribute to the story and the book. The authors have told me that the book was nominated for the most important history prize in the Netherlands and they are pleased with its reception. They are currently looking for a publisher in the US, so someday it might be printed in a version that I can read! (Most of the information for this blog about Reiumund Holzhey was found in an article  called “The Last Stagecoach Robber in Michigan” on Michiganology.com that was adapted from one that appeared in the Summer/Fall 2018 issue of Trace, the Archives of Michigan magazine.**)

Who would have ever dreamt that a photo of my husband’s great-great-grandfather, Russel Ralph Pealer (1842-1918) would find its way into a Dutch book in 2021?! It’s a beautiful story of the wonders of the internet, a culture of sharing, and the beauty of community. 

**In case you were interested, Reimund’s sentence was commuted by Governor Fred Warner on the advice of the warden, James Russell, in 1910. He was discharged in 1913 and lived and worked as a photographer wherever he found tourists, like Yellowstone and Captiva Island until 1952!