Whittington and You

So how exactly does the Whittington Family fit into our complex lineage? I have a completed chart that would show you, but it’s much too large to display on the blog. I will attempt to explain it in the biblical sense. Henry Horsham Whittington (1849-1902) married Anna (Hannah) Gough (1851-1923). Together they had eight children. It would appear, based on Clare’s research, that three of the children produced heirs that have extended the family line to the present. These three children included Clara Ellen Whittington (1874-1954), Mary Ann Whittington (1880-1935), and Joshua T. Whittington (1888-1959). 

Undated photograph of Anna and Henry Whittington 

Clara Ellen Whittington

Our lineage (the Jones and Myers clans) is descended from Clara Ellen, who married Thomas Arthur Myers (1862-1906). The couple had seven children before Thomas passed away in 1906, including Arthur Thomas Myers (1896-1984)--Grandpa Myers. Clara Ellen married George Hildebrand shortly after her first husband, Thomas Arthur died; they had two more children, Paul and Clara Hildebrand. You may remember Uncle Joe’s stories of his childhood talking about George, and how he wished that he had simply called him Grandpa. Arthur Thomas married Elizabeth Ann Moran (1901-1988) in 1922, and they had eight children, whom all of you know. Other descendants of Clara Ellen include the Burnett, Barrick and Reese families, many of whom still live in the Carbondale area.

Arthur Thomas and Elizabeth Ann Myers, 1922.

Joshua and Mary Ann Whittington 
We also have cousins descended from Joshua Whittington (1888-1959). For those of you who frequent Carbondale, you’ll recall a nice little restaurant called Ben-Mar on Main Street (http://www.ben-mar.com/index.php). Marina and Patrick Whittington own and operate the restaurant with their children (Patrick the descendant). Other families in Joshuas’s lineage include Chellino and Greathouse. Of the third Whittington child discussed above, Mary Ann Whittington (1880-1935), there are the Cook and Higgin’s families. I have not listed all other related families, but will do so when the time comes. Many of these families still reside in the Carbondale area.


So there is the whole story in a nutshell; the Whittington, Myers and Moran family history in just a few paragraphs. You will all be tested as soon as I find a gadget for creating multiple-choice quizzes.

Whittington: Sapere aude---Dare to be Wise

The Whittington family name is English in origin, but is now widespread across the globe. A perusal of Ancestry.com reveals that there are more than 270,000 registered family trees that include the name Whittington; every state in the U.S. hosts one or more Whittington family. Based on U.S. immigration records, most of the Whittington’s came from England, although a small number also emigrated from Ireland, Germany and Norway.

The Whittington roots of our family derive from Gloucestershire, England, which is located in the southwest portion of the country along the River Severn, and bordering Wales. Indeed, some of the earliest recorded records of the Whittington name derive from this part of the country, including England’s favorite, Richard Whittington (ca. 1350-1423). One can certainly argue that we are descended from English nobility; however, Clare’s descendant list extends back only to 1709. By this time, the Whittington’s were no longer held in high regard with the English nobility, having lost prestige and status. Perhaps future research will firmly associate us with the early nobles of Whittington.

So where does the Family motto come from? I have no idea. It is printed above several variations of coat-of-arms that I’ve located on the Internet. I’ll update you whenever I find out. So what of the coat-of-arms? A Google search of the Whittington Family Crest will result in a wide variety of arms, one of which adorns the family book published in 2010. However, the Coat-of-Arms does not apply to the surname, but only to male individuals and their descendants; hence the wide variety. The College of Arms (the official repository of registered arms) provides a good definition on their website:

Do coats of arms belong to surnames? A. No. There is no such thing as a 'coat of arms for a surname'. Many people of the same surname will often be entitled to completely different coats of arms, and many of that surname will be entitled to no coat of arms. Coats of arms belong to individuals. For any person to have a right to a coat of arms they must either have had it granted to them or be descended in the legitimate male line from a person to whom arms were granted or confirmed in the past.

In other words, we must first have a male descendant who registered a coat of arms in order for us to actually claim one. Unfortunately, the College of Arms does not appear to have an online search engine to look up coats-of-arms. Perhaps in a later post, I will display the variety of coats-of-arms related to the Whittington Family.

Billy's Status...

I realized I've been quite neglectful in keeping my siblings and family up to date on my job status. I'll start using the blog now :-) Although now it's under construction and I have to dodge through all these piles of bricks and lumber and crap.

I completed my certification training in Pittsburgh and flew home on March 26th. That ended a good month and a half certification period up there. I did quite well in the certification process and learned a lot. Since then I've been in a "mentoring" program where I'm sent to job sites as a trainee, working with experienced techs. I'll be doing this until they feel I'm ready to be on my own.

I'm currently on my second visit to the Upper Peninsula area of Michigan, in Quinnesec and Iron Mountain. People up here call themselves "Yoopers" and they have that funny accent you hear in that movie "Fargo". This is my second time up here working at a paper plant run by Verso Paper. My only other trip besides these two was one in Maxwell, CA, which is about 100 miles North of Bobby and Nikki. There I worked at a Natural Gas compressing station owned by PG&E. Unfortunately I couldn't make the time to go down and visit with Bobby and family, but there will be other trips.

It looks like the week of 5/9-5/15 I may be in Beaumont, TX (75 miles east of Houston), the following week sent to Detroit for a couple of weeks, and then a trip to Saginaw, MI for a week. I'm not sure why they keep sending me to Michigan. Hmmmm...

I've had a lot of down time at home as well since being certified, and have been able to complete a LOT of projects. So things are going well and we're getting ready to host a cubic butt-ton of Jones family members in July. whoo hooo

Lot of loving memories of Mom today, on Mother's Day.

Memoirs of Catherine Myers

Mom asked her siblings to write down memories of their childhood for her volume on the Moran Family. Aunt Catherine organized her memories chronologically:

1927 ( August)
We lived at 19 Pike Street. Joe was born. I went to the hospital to see Mom and the new baby. The baby was in a crib in Mom’s room. Joe came home. Mom had him in a carriage. He was crying and I tried to push the carriage, leaned on the handle and dumped him on the floor.

1927-1928
I had a toothache. Mom told me to eat my potatoes and gravy and it would get better. It did!!

1928-1929
We lived (six??) months with Grandma and Grandpa Moran while Dad went to Schenectady to find work. He got a job in Locomotive Works. I watched Grandma trim the wicks and put kerosene in the lamps every day.

Summer 1929
Before leaving for Schenectady, Mom took us to spend a day with Romaine Myers and Dad’s Aunt Sara. Betty got stung on the neck with a bee. She also took us to Kingston to stay overnight with her Aunt Margaret and her boys. One outstanding memory of that trip was getting a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast with canned milk on it (I didn’t like it). Kate took me to my first movies at the Irving before we moved to Schenectady. It was Al Jolson. He sang “Sonny Boy’’ but I don’t remember the name of the film. Dad started calling Joe Sonny Boy.

1930
We went to Schenectady on the train. It was Mom, Aunt Kate, Betty, Joe and I. Dad was supposed to meet us but we didn’t get off the train at the right stop. Dad looked all over for us. We got off at the next stop and took a bus to Schenectady. Dad finally found us huddled in the hallway of the apartment at 19 Park Place in the wee hours of the morning. Dad had the key and let us in.

September 1930
I started to school in a public school just across the street from us. I was all dressed up: New shoes, new dress. When I told Mom I had to sit on the floor because there were no seats, she immediately took me to St. John the Evangelist School. We said our prayers and sang little songs in French. Mom started me taking piano lessons. We were only in that apartment a short time and we moved to 24 Park Place where we had a piano and our own furniture. We had a boarder in our apartment. His name was Mr. Hill. He played the xylophone and was a student at the Union Seminary Theological School in Schenectady. One night we had a fire. Dad said Mr. Hill turned his gas heater up too high and the curtains caught fire. Dad doused it with a pail of water and the fire was out before the fire trucks arrived. The thing that stands out in my mind is the fireman running up the steps with a big hose and an axe.

Thibodeux family lived in the apartment below us. There were a lot of boys in the family. Several of them played instruments in a band. They practiced in our house while mother accompanied them on the piano. Kate stayed with us for a while and worked in the Mohican Market. Then she married Jack Williams and lived for a while in Schenectady. Dad and Jack roomed with Jack’s sister, Mrs. Davis. Then Mary came to stay with us, met Carl Stock and married him. While Mary was with us Mom had a miscarriage and I remember that she was very sick. She thought Betty and I were standing someplace in her room and I could hear Dad trying to convince her that we were in bed. Later, when we moved back to Grandma Moran’s house, I heard Mom tell Grandma about hearing the little person all in white tell her she would be alright. She was convinced that it was her little sister Annie. (Near death experience??)

During one of the band practices, Joe was rushed to the Ellis Hospital where he had tracheal intubation. He had what Mom thought was croup but it turned out to be diphtheria. He was rocking in the chair saying, “Mommy I can’t breathe”. Aunt Mary nursed him back to health in a steam filled isolation unit. During my first year in school 1929-1930, Betty, Joe and I had chicken pox, German measles and flu. Betty started to school in September 1930. She wouldn’t be six until May but they took her anyway. She was a puny little thing and used to fall on the way home from school. Grandpa Moran came to visit us and took Better and her 21 dolls back to Finch Hill with him. When Dad was working he bought us a toy every payday. My favorite gift was roller skates. Mom told me I wore them to bed and she took them off when I went to sleep. Betty must have come home the Christmas of 1930. Mom took me Christmas shopping with her and I began my tree-trimming career (What! No Santa?). We bought two beautiful dolls at $5 each. Mine had brown hair and was dressed in pink. Betty’s had long hair and was dressed in blue. When Joe recovered and left the hospital, he had to stay in bed for two weeks so he wouldn’t get myocarditis. He was at the “terrible two “ stage and wouldn’t eat anything but puffed rice three times a day.

Jan-Feb 1931
The Moran’s big house on Finch Hill burned down and with it Betty’s 21 dolls. Also destroyed were Dad’s war souvenirs, table and chairs, ironing board and iron that dad bought Mom for Christmas when I was 2 months old, my beautiful teddy bear and many more valuable items, wedding gifts, etc that Mom and Dad had stored on the 3rd floor because there was no room for them on the truck when they moved to Schenectady.

April 28, 1931
Clare Ann was born. Dad had taken Betty and I to the movies. Mom was supposed to go to the hospital to have the baby. Aunt Gert was with her and she didn’t even have time to call Dr. Reynolds. We arrived just in time to hear a baby cry and Dad sent Betty and I to tell Aunt Kate and he called the doctor. Gert delivered the baby. It was the first time she delivered a baby. When we got back with Aunt Kate, Mom and baby were all fixed up and the Dr. was on his way out. My most vivid memory of that day was seeing the foot of Mom’s bed elevated on two kitchen chairs.

Summer 1931
We moved back to Carbondale. Dad was laid off, but before he left he had a piece of steel embedded in his cornea. He used to tell me the doctor had to take his eye out to remove the steel. When you see eye surgery it looks like that. We returned to Carbondale on the train. We had a lunch in shoeboxes. Clare Ann was six weeks old. She cried all the way home. We went to live with Grandma and Grandpa Moran on River Street in an apartment above Kaufman’s warehouse and store. We finally moved to Farview Street and Dad got a part-time job in the mines. I think it was in the Jermyn Colliery. We lived over the landlord. The No. 7 school started. I brought the measles rubella home to Betty, Joe and Clare Ann. Clare was six months old and she got pneumonia. She was very sick and Grandpa’s doctor Dr. Dixon wanted to give her the “new” sulfa drug. The nurses in the family, Gert, Mildred and Mary, were against it. So, Dr. Fineran doctored us through the measles. Sometime in November they started to give out diphtheria toxoid. I brought my slip home to get signed but the day before it was given out I got diphtheria. Aunt Mary took care of me and the house was quarantined. We didn’t get much school in that year. The doctor gave us all a dose of Diphtheria antitoxin and nobody else got it and it shortened my illness. For Christmas in 1931 dad made us a doll house out of orange crates and Mom made curtains for the dollhouse windows. It was all furnished, with four rooms of furniture. He also made us a little table and two chairs. Our big dolls got all new clothes. When we lived on Farview Street, Aunt Kate took me, Betty and Joe to sing on the Carbondale radio. I sang Ramona, Betty Springtime in the Rockies and Joe sang Pop Goes the Weasel.