Family Mysteries
Family Mysteries
I became interested in my genealogy, or the history of my family, when I was 13 years old. At that time I visited an old cemetery in Matagorda, Texas. Near the center of the cemetery was a large, well tended plot surrounded by a wrought iron fence. The headstones were two of the largest, most ornate in the cemetery. They were the headstones of my great-grandfather, Peter J. Duffy (1851-1924) and his second wife, Josephine Nolte (1858-1920). But my great-grandmother had been his first wife,
Margaret (Maggie) Vogg who had died during childbirth in 1878 at the age of 22. I continued searching the cemetery and finally found her. Her grave was at the edge of the cemetery. It was hard to read the headstone which was blocked by the weeds surrounding it. It was broken, a large chunk of the top half buried in the dirt. Obviously, her burial site had not been tended for many years. The disparity in the condition of these two plots deeply affected me. It gave me a burning desire to know more about these people whose blood flowed through my veins. Through the years since that time I have slowly pieced together a great deal of the history of my family, some just names on legal documents, some stories of their lives and times. Although I no longer actively pursue genealogical research, there are two missing links that still perplex me, that I would still like to find some answers to. That is the reason for this page. Perhaps someone will stumble upon it and be able to solve these two mysteries for me.
The
biggest mystery concerns another of my great-grandfathers, Mr. Richardson. That's
it! The sum total that I know about him. Since my grandmother's maiden name
was Lucy Emma Richardson (1874-1949), it is assumed that her father's last name was
Richardson. It is said that she was born 15 February 1874 in Orleans Parish,
Louisiana. Her mother's name was Lucy Peake. I know quite a bit about Lucy
Peake's family. Her father was Joseph Peake, originally from London, England.
He was a bit of an adventurer and even survived a slave uprising in Jamaica, West Indies,
where his daughter was born. It is said that Lucy Peake was 32 when she died in
Galveston, Texas. My grandmother, Lucy Emma Richardson, was 2 years old at the time
and was taken in and raised by her mother's best friend and her husband, W. Tobe and Emma
Ford. I have found two different stories about how Lucy Peake died. One is
that she died of yellow fever. The other is that both she and her husband died in a
boating accident. Yet there are no death records for a Lucy Peake or a Lucy
Richardson in Galveston, Texas or in Orleans Parish, Louisiana. And what of Mr.
Richardson? I have never been able to find any record of him. No marriage
records, no deeds, no death certificate. Why do I know so much about my
grandmother's maternal family yet absolutely nothing of her father?
My other mystery goes back another generation, in another line. It concerns one of my great-great-grandmothers. Her name was Margaret Weir Bradley. On 23 February 1842, she married Henry James Simons in Gibson County, Tennessee. He was a physician and master mason and came from a prominent Sumpter County, South Carolina family. Together they raised a family of three sons and three daughters. The family eventually moved to Chickasaw County, Tennessee where Margaret is listed on the 1860 census as a widow. But who was she? Who were her parents? I have never been able to trace her any further back than her marriage certificate. There were a number of Bradley families living in that portion of Tennessee at the time but I haven't been able to connect her to any of them. Could it be that her true maiden name was Margaret Weir and that the Bradley was a name from a first marriage? Family lore says that she was part American Indian but I obviously cannot prove that if I cannot locate any family for her.
So, those are the mysteries I would truly like to solve. If anyone should come across this page and know anything about either Mr. Richardson or Margaret Weir Bradley, please contact me at NorthRanch@msn.com. Thanks!
