Paternal Grandfather Ancestor Photographs

William Merritt Shaw is my great great great grandfather.  He married Cornelia Margaret Sluyter.  They are the parents of Tryphosa Shaw who married Nelson Simmons.  They begat Millie Vieta Simmons who married Bert Nickolas Stone who are the parents of Newell Elbert Stone who is my paternal grandfather.

Something interesting about William Merritt Shaw is that, according to my great grandmother Millie, he was a graduate of Harvard University.

Apparently the Shaws were staunch Seventh-day Adventists and went west with the SDA movement.

According to my third cousin, She has letters written between my great great grandmother Tryphosa and Ellen White's people.  Ellen White being the founder or one of the bigwigs anyway of the Seventh-day Adventists.

William Merritt Shaw family

Tryphosa back left

Same family as above years later.

It gives me a much different vibe of that family.  They don't look like the same refined, proper people as above.  :-)

Something interesting about my great great grandfather Nelson Simmons -- according to his daughter Millie, He had a mean devil of a stepmother who kicked him out at age 8 and he was on his own since then.

Also according to Millie -- Nelson was very well versed in the Bible and read it often. He could also read the Hebrew Bible.

Another story Millie tells is that he accidentally stuck a knife in his brother's eye while skating a squirrel in Nebraska.

Here is a direct quote from the transcript of Millie from 1968

"Indians shooting at the wagon? Yes, there was a woman, they had to flee in the night to get away from the Indians, and there was a woman that had a frying pan up whenever she came to some brush she would hold the pan up like this. That was an Indian uprising. I don’t know what year it was. My other was among them. I don’t know how old she was."

"The Indians bothered in Nebraska awful bad. They stole our horses while the folks were in Nebraska. The folks were there awhile. I don’t know why they had to leave. Nebraska was where the Indians bothered my folks so bad. We had a big Newfoundland dog. She had pups every hear and the Indians came and stole them. They cooked and ate them (the pups)."

"The government paid the people for years afterward for the horses that the Indians stole. They paid the people for the horses."

Nelson and Tryphosa Shaw Simmons family

My great-grandmother Millie is in the back middle.  Her sister Marguerite on her left and in front next to Tryphosa is Irene.

According to my grandfather, The little boy in front between Nelson and Tryphosa was actually Millie's son and not brother. I hate to spread rumors and at this point that's merely speculation.  Although I did do the math and it is possible -- Millie would have been 17 when Carl was born.  

If it's true, it was kept hush-hush and never revealed.  Carl was raised as Millie's brother. 

One of the fun things about doing family history work is finding stories and learning more about my ancestors and their lives.

And digging up potential skeletons in the closet also makes it interesting.

Millie seems to have more than her share of skeletons, according to my grandfather -- her son.

Interestingly, for being staunch Seventh-day Adventists -- none of their current descendents that we know about still practice the religion.  Most of them fell away during my grandpa's generation.  My third cousin went to SDA church with her grandmother but left when she was 12.

As far as I know, neither my grandpa nor any of his siblings raised their children as Seventh-day Adventists. Apparently the Simmons children were too heavy-handed in raising their children as Seventh-day Adventists.  At least that's the story I hear. 

Or maybe they all just recognized that they didn't have the full truth.  :-)

Not likely.  :-)