Mail Call: 29 September 1934

From George Potter in Sargent, MO to Mary Potter, who is still working her temp job in St. Louis.

George is looking into buying the "New Southern" hotel in Houston, MO in trade for the farm.  This won't happen...but with Gladys cooking and a staff of good-looking daughters it might have been a hit.

Note:  "Walt" is Walter Bremerkamp, George's brother-in-law
(See photo below)
Mary was staying with the Bremerkamp family at the time.

The Bremerkamps of East St. Louis
Walter (1897-1972)
Robert (1926-2006)
Mary (1926-1933)
Dora Potter (1892-1966): George's sister
Photo circa 1929

Dora Potter Bremerkamp was seriously affected by the death of Mary Bremerkamp in 1933 of some childhood disease.  Dora put the child to bed with orders to stop fussing, but little Mary died overnight.  At the time Mary Potter was staying with her, Dora was involved in the Spiritualist movement.  The seances were what my mother remembered from that time.

Mail Call: 15 September 1934

Letter from George Potter to Mary Potter (15 Sept 1934) - a Saturday.  Mary is working in St. Louis at her temporary employer, while George is back in Sargent, MO.

The farm had a peach tree: 85 quarts of peaches canned without sugar...a wonder nobody died of botulism, since this would most likely have been hot-bath canning at 212F at best.

The good part is on the second page...the car gets a flat, and David Potter fixes it, while Dorothy Potter and her friend Ruby Taylor decide they won't wait and walk on.  They get their comeuppance in a sudden rain storm.

Emma Potter Parker (1878-1953)
George Potter's younger sister back in Erie County, PA
who sent back some cash now and then.

Note:  Arch Brooks (1886-1968) was the Potter's neighbor.  His property surrounded the Potter farm on all sides.  Mary was his daughter.

Mail Call: 1 September, 1934

Letter from George Potter to my mother, Mary Potter, dated 1 Sept 1934 (a Saturday):  By this time in 1934,  Mary had finally found a job in St.  Louis, MO, after spending 3 years in business school in Tulsa, OK.  The job was temporary/provisional but fortunately lasted longer than its original 10 day run.

Any earlier letters (1930-1934) were not preserved, assuming I don't find some in unexpected places in the files.   After a year or so farming in Sargent, MO, George is looking to doing something else.  That isn't going to happen, though. 

George Potter (1875-1943)

Note:  the "flappers" are Marjorie and Florence although,
in the singular, Florence is usually "Flapper" and Elaine "Soph"

16 July 1919: Tulsa, Oklahoma; A letter from George Potter

I found the following 1919 letter from George Potter to his daughter Mary back in Erie, Pennsylvania in a box of miscellaneous holiday and gift cards, mostly from persons unknown to me, rather than in the carefully-sorted files where Mary kept her (many) old letters.

This letter is special, if a bit odd, since it is addressed to Mary (age 8 at the time) but gives instructions on what to pack and move from Pennsylvania to Oklahoma, and how to pack things.  It provides an interesting mental inventory of a household of the time, although in a form Gladys Potter probably neither needed nor wanted.  George has been in Tulsa for a while (he has an "ingrown appetite" from living in boarding houses), but his family would not arrive until January, 1920.

There seems to have been a rather good piano to sell (perhaps Mary Minerva Hasbrouck Potter had played once...although Victorian parlor furnishings may well have included a piano without anyone able to play it).  There was also a chair with Mary Hasbrouck's grandfather's name (Robert Heath) mentioned specifically...I wonder what happened to it.

Please click the letters to enlarge them if necessary.

Letter, July 16, 1919
The inflation factor 1919-2016 is about 20x

note:  the Benders mentioned here are Gladys'
aunt "Vine" Lore Bender (1865-1945)
and husband Eli Bender.  

Gladys Potter's Ancestors: Antoine Lore, River Pirate?

This post is an abbreviated version of the excellent family history which is being written by Roberta Estes on her blog Dna-explained.com.  It is well worthwhile to read the full story there.

Grandma Potter's great-grandfather Antoine Lore was born after his parents, Honore' Lore and Marie LeFaille, had emigrated to Quebec from New York/Massachusetts after the British lifted their ban on the Acadians.   Their home was near the parish of Blairfindie, in what would become the town of l'Acadie.

Ste-Marguerite-de-Blairfindie
credit: Histoire de L’Acadie, Provence de Quebec, published in 1908
via Roberta Estes

Antoine Lore's baptismal record shows that he was born sometime in March, 1805.  His father is a carpenter (joiner) and is able to sign the registry, unlike the witnesses:

Batismal Record of Antoine Lore, 1805
Ste-Marguerite-de-Blairfindie church
credit:  Roberta Estes

The 25th of March 1805, we the undersigned have baptized Antoine, born yesterday of the legitimate marriage of Honoré Lord, joiner, and of Marie Lafay of this parish.  The godfather was Antoine Crotteau and godmother was Rosalie Guerin, who (both) declared they did not know how to write.  The father has signed with us.

s/ Honoré Lore (sic)  s/ R. P. (Rev. Père) Lancto, Priest 

In 1831, at the age of about 25, he marries a Vermont girl, Rachel Hill, who is at most 15 or 16, having been born in 1815.  The marriage was by a Justice of the Peace, with no other information filled in.  Rachel's family is an old-time New England family with Mayflower ancestors and almost certainly Protestant.  Perhaps an elopement with an exotic and handsome older man?

Vermont is in easy reach of l'Acadie, traveling south up the Richelieu River to Lake Champlain and then a few miles east to Bristol and Starksboro.  Antoine was perhaps already an itinerant trader, as he would be later in life.

Birth Record
Rachel Levina Hill
credit: Roberta Estes

Marriage Record, 1831
Antione Lore and Rachel Hill
credit: Roberta Estes

There is no sign of Antoine and Rachel's whereabouts until 1843 where, according to Franklin Lore's descendants, Frank was born in Jamestown, Chautauqua County, New York.  There are, however, no official records to support this tradition.  William Lore was born earlier, in 1839, also in New York, probably in the same general area.

It is not probable that there were not other babies born between 1831 and 1839; they most likely died in infancy.  More died later.

Antoine (now "Anthony") and Rachel appear in the 1850 and 1860 census in Warren County, Pennsylvania, which is just down the Allegheny watershed from Jamestown, New York.  "Anthony" applied for US citizenship on June 2, 1862 in Warren County.  With a five-year waiting period before his final application, "Anthony" should have reappeared in 1867.  He does not, though, and so is presumed dead 1862-1867.  Rachel is gone shortly after the 1870 census.  She left a number of younger children, who were taken in by relatives or hired out as farm labor.

Several of the families who descended from Antoine Lore had stories about him and about his death.  He likely spent much of his life as an "Indian trader" or "River Pirate" on the Allegheny River. Roberta Estes' source for the "River Pirate" tale lived in Indiana yet used the local Allegheny River term and was embarrassed by the whole issue; this gives me some confidence in the story.  Allegheny river pirates were not pirates as such, but traders who supplied raftsmen on the river with beverages and other goods, mostly of inferior quality at untaxed prices.

The different family stories tend to agree that Antoine drowned, most likely in the Allegheny, possibly in the line of his duties, and probably murdered.  A capsized raft figures in one story.

"The Progenitor"
possibly Antoine Lore (1805-before 1867),
more likely his son Frank (1843-1916)
credit: Frank Lore Family, via Roberta Estes 

 This photo is of Roberta Estes' ancestor, Curtis B. Lore, much younger brother of William Lore.  One imagines William and their father Antoine had similar good looks as young men.  They certainly were persuasive to women.

Curtis B. Lore (1861-1909)
photo ca. 1887 (aged 26 years)
William H. Lore's Brother
credit:  Roberta Estes

Gladys Potter's Ancestors: Early Acadians

Although I like to think that I might have followed the DNA and Census  data on Grandma Potter's great-grandfather "Anthony" Lore, born in Canada, back to some useful data, I did not actually have to do so.

One of the matches I found was a descendant of Curtis B. Lore, who would have been Grandma Potter's great-uncle.  This cousin had done an enormous amount of research on the Lore family, as well as her other ancestors, and also wrote up much helpful documentation on how to use DNA tests for genealogy.

Her blog is http://dna-explained.com.  It is well worth reading through.  I am giving the short version in the next few posts.

Since the story involves the history of the Acadian people, which I did not know (a middle-school assignment to memorize the proem to Longfellow's "Evangeline" is as close as I ever got), a summary seems in order.

The earliest Lore in the Americas was Julien Laure dit Lamontagne (ca. 1653-1754), who arrived in Port Royal, Acadia, New France (now Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia, Canada) somewhere between 1668 and 1670.  He was probably a soldier at the time.  The "dit(e)" name is a kind of formalized nickname of military origin (Julian "Mountain" Lore) typical of the Acadian settlers.

Acadia.
credit: www.acadian.org

Acadia (which included the modern Canadian Maritimes, part of Quebec and the US State of Maine) was contested territory, with a long series of battles between the British, French and First Nations (this is, after all, a Canadian story at first).

By 1755, the British were in charge and had run out of patience with an Acadian insurgency, and decided to deport the entire population, without sorting out political neutrals.  The citizens of Port Royal were among the first to be deported, including the children and grandchildren of Julien Lore.  The initial deportations were to New England and New York, and several Lore families were put off the boat in New York (City) in December, 1755.  

The British later reconsidered the wisdom of sending Acadians into such near-by territories, as the deportees did not stay put on the farms where they were indentured, but instead gathered into large, poor, French-speaking, Catholic communities in the Colonies.  The Crown then turned to deporting Acadians to France and the Caribbean.  This later wave of Acadians found passage to Louisiana, where their influence lives on in Cajun culture.

By 1768, the British decided to allow the surviving Acadians to leave the English-speaking colonies and migrate to Quebec.  There was no point in returning to Nova Scotia, as the land had been given to English settlers, although a few of the old families did go back eventually.

The Lore family and close relations eventually settled half-way between Montreal and the New York/Vermont border in the village of l'Acadie.  Grandma Potter's great-grandfather Antoine Lore was born and baptised there in 1805.

Gladys Potter's Ancestors: A partial solution

A year or so ago my older son gave DNA test kits as birthday presents (my wife and I have consecutive birthdays, although some years apart...and not in my favor).  We took the samples and sent the tests off.

Genetic genealogy is a "fishing" rather than a "hunting" activity, since to be of any use other distant cousins have to have tested, and those distant cousins need to have some paper trail on their ancestors.  This, more often than not, leads to no "fish."

Fortunately, in the case of the Lore family, there were matches to be caught including a long-time genealogist with a vast amount of information on this family.

1860 Census,  Blue Eye, Warren Co., Pennsylvania.  Credit: Ancestry.com

Looking back at the 1860 census of the Lore family, matches have turned up with n-th great grandchildren of Maria Lore, "Adin" (A.D) Lore, Simon Lore and Curtis Lore.  Other matches include descendants of "Anthony" Lore's brother and of several even more distant Lore ancestors.

It is not probable that the William Lore in Blue Eye, PA, is NOT Gladys Potter's grandfather.

William Lore was born somewhere in New York in 1839 according to this census, although his obituary in 1914 gave his birth date as 1836.  Where, exactly, his family was in New York when he was born has not been determined.  By 1850 the family is in Columbus, Warren Co., Pennsylvania and in 1860 in Blue Eye.

William and Eliza have their first child, Eunice Lavinia, in Ohio in 1865.  There is an earlier Ohio record for William Lore in 1863.  He is living in Saybrook-Ashtabula and is married, presumably to Eliza as Eunice is Eliza's mother's name.  The document is a Civil War "draft card", it is not clear if William served.

Civil War Draft Records, Ashtabula OH
W.H. Lore is on line 3
credit: Ancestry.com

By the time William and Eliza's second daughter, Eveline, is born in 1866 the family is back in Pennsylvania as shown in the Census tabulations.  The tax man also visits in 1866, and William pays $7.50 tax for 6 months trade as a "pedlar 3rd class,"  as recorded in the tax list below.  The "3rd class" means he is travelling with one horse or mule. He is working along the Allegheny River, way upstream in Tidioute, Warren Co., PA.

Federal Assessment Lists, 1866
Wm.H. Lore is on Line 36
credit: Ancestry.com

Daughter Betsy Lore was born in 1869 in Pennsylvania.  In 1870 Eliza and daughters are living in Union City, Erie Co., Pennsylvania with Eliza's parents, but without William.  W.H. Lore did make at least one further appearance, since Gladys Potter's mother Alice Olivia Lore was born in 1871 and we have the DNA match.  Eliza and daughters again appear in the Census in Waterford, Erie Co., PA in 1880 with her mother Eunice, her father Ezra having since died. No William Lore.

William Henry Lore lived until 1914, was married four times according to the 1910 Census, and had, by various counts, up to fourteen children in total.  I'll get back to him later, as his father has an even more interesting story.

Western Pennsylvania, 1876
Detail near Waterford, Union City, Corry, Columbus
and Spring Creek (Blue Eye)
credit: www.usgwarchives.net