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WELCOME!


Each week (or thereabouts), I will post about an ancestor of mine and maybe one of yours. This will be a peek into their past and not their whole story. If you wish to learn more about that person, let me know!

The photo is part of a wall of framed photos I have of many of our ancestors. Most of these came from years of connecting with cousins, so few are original. I have 25 of our direct ancestors! That includes some great-great-grandparents, and even one or two great-great-great-grandparents.

Here's to the journey!

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Jennie May (Stark) DuBois (1891-1965)

Grandmother (I never called her Grandma or other nickname) lived next door to us in Marshall, MO for a few years. What I can’t work out is exactly when; I’m guessing about 1959 or 1960. My telescoped recollection of my grandparents fits into Before Granddad Died and After Granddad Died And I Stayed With Grandmother From Time to Time. Granddad passed on in 1962, Grandmother in 1965, so I had her undivided attention for about two and a half years. My favorite activity with her was playing Scrabble which we started doing maybe when I was about eight. I will always be grateful for that game, and for Dad and Grandmother prompting us kids to spell or name the continents or point to a place on a map or answer a question about American history. Scrabble gave me a fine appreciation for words. We used an old Webster’s dictionary for challenges which did not have a lot of Scrabble-inspired words in it. We didn’t challenge each other often, because we were both excellent spellers. Oh! How I lived ...
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James Knox Stark

JAMES KNOX STARK James Knox Stark was born 23 May 1839 in Grantsville, MD to Peter Stark and (probably) Elizabeth Wright or (possibly) Elizabeth Dean. His father was born in Ireland, emigrating about 1832 as a part of the (ethnically) German protestant Stark families who came to America and Australia between 1810 and 1870. It is possible that one family first established themselves, earning money for subsequent siblings to leave Ireland for what they no doubt believed would be a better life. I am documenting the Stark family from their immigration from Germany about 1709 to Ireland. Because of the destruction of records in Ireland at a time of unrest, most civil records were destroyed. Piecing together what information I can is a herculean task. What I do know is that James’ father Peter was born in Ireland, coming from a settlement of Germans who intermarried for over 100 years, rarely marrying outside of their protestant faith to a non-German-surnamed individual. According to the 184...
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Orval Henry Stark (1866-1952), Hester Ann Gardner (1872-1897)

  Sometimes, you get a sense of an ancestor through the records you find. Also, through the absence of talk about that ancestor from their closest relatives. Then, you find out that your ancestor gave his only items of any value—his saber and his rifle from the Spanish-American War—to a distant relative rather than one of his children. And you discover he remarried to a woman who was never mentioned by his daughter though she may have lived with the couple. But, then, you remember one thing—that your great-grandfather hauled trash to help put his daughter through college. This is what I had always heard about Jennie May Stark’s father: that he came down off the farm to move to Columbia, Missouri, so that his daughter could attend and graduate from the University of Missouri School of Agriculture. But, to backtrack a bit… Orval was born in Allegany County, Maryland in 1866, just before his parents migrated (possibly not for the first time) to Missouri farmland. In that area of Maryl...
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