Gillespie, Galaspie,Glasby

My Grandma Russel (Edith Terrill Williams Russel), spoke often of her Terrill roots in Cornwall. I don’t recall her ever talking about her mother. My Dad talked about his grandfather Frank Terrill (who lived with them for a while after Elmer was killed in ’33). Franks wife was Elizabeth Gillespie, 1858-1931. I knew practically nothing of her to begin with and had to rely entirely on the paper trail. The first and most compelling evidence for her background is provided by the 1870 census in Mahanoy City. There we find the Galespie family (spelling was variable, whether at the whim of the family or of the census taker,) consisting of Charles, 45, a miner, Margaret, 40, both born in Ireland, Jacob, 18, born in Scotland, Elizabeth 13, Ellen 10, Margaret 6, and Robert 4, all born in PA. What makes this compelling is not the family, but their neighbors: John and Mary Terrill (apparently spelled Farrell for some reason), with their 8 kids, including 16 year old Francis (Frank). Five years later, Frank and Elizabeth, both then living in St Nicholas, walked to Mahanoy City and got married, as related in the 50th anniversary article in the Reading Eagle on Aug 29, 1935:

What is extraordinary about this “Wedding Anniversary” is that it happened 4 years after Liza died, a detail that is not mentioned in the article, which,rather, makes the clear implication that both honorees were present. There is no uncertainty about that, since Liza’s death certificate is available:

This document confirms the date of death and her parents names (including her mothers maiden name of Townsend). It also reveals where she was born: Thomastown PA. This almost certainly refers to the Thomaston Colliery in Cass Twp. According to the history of Schuylkill County (Munsell, 1881): “CASS TOWNSHIP

This township is located a little west of the

center of Schuylkill county geographically, and is

bound by Butler, New Castle, Norwegian, Minersville,

Branch, Reilly and Foster. It was formed from

Branch, in 1848. In 1855 a portion was set off

to form part of Foster, and in 1857 another portion was

included in Reilly, then formed. The number of taxable

inhabitants in the territory now comprised in Branch,

Cass and part of Reilly townships was in 1842, 1,058.

The number of taxable inhabitants in Cass in 1849, as

then bounded, was 799. The population of Cass in

1880 was 3,061.”

And a little later in the description of Cass:

“The Thomaston colliery was opened in 1858 by Heckscher

& Co.,and operated by them until 1866. The first

breaker was built the year the shaft was sunk, and had

a capacity of three hundred tons per day.”

The area around Thomaston is shown in an old 1878 map:

It is a mile of so north of Minersville. I have not found the Gillespie (or Galespie) family in the 1860 census, though according to the above DC we should expect to see them in Thomaston. I went looking for anybody named Charles, with a wife Margaret, in Cass Twp in the 1860 census. There was a Charles Gillesby, which looked promising. But he was 10 years old in another family entirely. The only other possibility is this:

The name recorded is Glasby. That seems a stretch, but considering their probable Irish or Scottish accents, Gillespie may have sounded more like Galespie (as it was often spelled early on), or even Galasby, if you slur the p and a the vowels, which might have sounded like Glasby to the census taker. So the name doesn’t bother me much. The countries of birth, Ireland, Ireland and Scotland, agree with most future records. But there are discrepancies: Charles is 38. Should be 35. Margaret is 28. Should be 30. Mary at 10 is ok. But where is Jacob… should be 8? And Elizabeth, just days shy of 2? It’s one thing to misspell a name or misreport an age. Those are common. It is harder to explain away two missing children. Still, I think on balance this is probably them, and there is probably some rational explanation for why Jacob and Elizabeth are missing. I just don’t know what it might be. We know they weren’t dead! Arrivals Should we look back earlier that 1860 in Census? Unlikely… most miners came in the 50’s. Anyway the census records say they came between Jacob in ’52 and Elizabeth in ’58. If you look in the Immigration records, you find what looks like them… Charles Gillespie, age 23, from Ireland, arrived in New York on the ship Sheridan on Nov 20, 1852, out of Liverpool. He was alone. (Again an age discrepancy… if he was born in ‘25 he would have been 27 in ’52. If he was 38 in 1860, as in the purported census, he would have been 30 in ’52. It seems like people in those days didn’t have a clear idea of when they were born. Or the record keepers were sloppy.) About a year later we find “Mrs Marg’t Gillespie”, age 22, with 3 year old Mary

Jane and 8 mo old “Ja?” (I can’t make it out) on the ship Mary Morris out of Glasgow, arriving in New York on Sept 20 1853.

This time the ages are about right, and the “Ja?” matches up with Jacob. (often kids given names changed with time as they got older. ) Either Charles came first to get settled before bringing his family over, or they only had enough money for him and it took a year to earn enough to pay for the others passage. In any event the family seems to have been reunited be late 1853 in the US. Where they spent the next 5 years before Thomaston is a mystery. But clearly they came to mine coal, and I have no doubt they spent those years somewhere in Schuylkill county. Scotland At writing, I have had limited access to UK records. From what I gleaned so far, Charles and Margaret lived in Kilbirnie, Ayershire, Scotland before leaving for the US. They had three kids there: Mary , 1849, Agnes, 1851, and Jacob, 1852. Since Agnes was not on the ship, or recorded in the family after they arrived, I presume she died in Scotland. Not their only child that would die young. From Wikipedia, “Kilbirnie is a small town of 7642 inhabitants situated in the Garnock Valley area of North Ayrshire, on the west coast of Scotland. It is around 20 miles south-west of Glasgow and approximately 10 miles from Paisley and Irvine respectively” That makes it just opposite Ireland, separated by the Firth of Clyde and the Isle of Aran. Prime Scotch-Irish land. I have no idea where they were born in Ireland, though you would suppose it was what we know today as Northern Ireland. No question they were Protestants.

I can’t push further back without better access to uk records. So lets look ahead and see what happened to them. What happened to Mary? According to the 1851 UK census, Mary Jane was born in 1849. She was 3 on the ship manifest of 1853. She was 10 in the 1860 census log of the “Gladsby’s”. But she is not in the 1870 census or any later. I presume she died somewhere in between. But she would have been 20 or 21 in 1870, so it is possible she got married. I find neither a death record nor a marriage record that shows what became of Mary. Other lost children It seems they lost so many kids they erected a memorial to them, at least to the boys.

Note that the Robert who died in 1857 was followed by the Robert born in 1867. That was entirely normal in the day, (and maybe still is, though the incidence of child death is far smaller today).

1880 In this census they live in Bear Run, Mahanoy Twp, not far from where they had been 10 years before. Bear Run is just east of Mahanoy City, along Centre Street, towards Ashland. It is due south of Shenandoah.

Charles is 54 (ok). Margaret is 48 (a little low, expect 50). Then there is Ellen, 18, Margaret 15 and Robert 13, all consistent with 1870. The older kids from 1870, Jacob and Elizabeth, would now be in their 20s and out of the house. Liza had married Frank Terrill in 1875. Jacob also lives in Bear Run, married to Isabella, 22, with an 8 mo old son Robert. Jacob, of course, is a miner, like everybody else. 1900 The 1890 census being destroyed, we are left with 1900 and beyond. The fact is Charles would have been 75 and Margaret 70 in 1900. Neither of them show up. Nor do I find death notices (not common until 1906), or FAG posts for them. So I have no idea when they died, except somewhere between 1880 and 1900. That’s quite a span! Children of Charles and Margaret To review, here is a list of the known kids: Mary Jane 1849 Scotland no record after 1860 Agnes 1851 Scotland died before 1853 Jacob 1852 Scotland died 1913; m Isabella Young Charles 1854 PA died 1854 Robert 1855 PA died 1857 Liza 1858 PA died 1931 ; m Frank Terrill William 1859 PA died 1862

Ellen 1862 PA Hugh 1864 PA died 1864 Margaret 1864 PA, died 1910. Unmarried Robert 1867 PA, Note that Margaret and Hugh may have been twins. Margarets bd in dec 24. There is none listed for Hugh. Either they were twins or there was less than a year separating them. Of these 11 kids, only two, Jacob and Liza, have certain offspring. The cases of Ellen and Robert are problematic, and I’ll take them up later. I won’t rehash Liza, because that is part of Frank Terrill’s tale, which I’ve told before. First Jacob:

Jacob Born in 1852 in Scotland, Jacob is the oldest surviving child of Charles and Margaret (assuming that Mary Jane had died and not just disappeared) In the 1880 Census, Jacob was married to Isabella, and had a child, Robert, born in 1879. In 1900 Jacob lived alone in Mahanoy City, as a widower. He died in 1913,age 60, and his DC is available:

So when he died he was identified as a Farmer, not a Miner, in Locust Valley, an area just south of Mahanoy City, up the mountain. His mothers name looks more like an improbable Towser than Townsend, but the person signing the DC may not have been entirely up on family history. He has both of Jacob’s parents being Scottish born instead of Irish. Exactly when Isabella died between 1880 and 1900 is not clear. Jacobs son Robert died in 1941. His DC is :

so he was born in St Nicholas and his mother was born Isabella Young in St Clair, which is nearby. Recall that Frank and Liza were in St Nicholas when they got married in 1875. So the elder Gillespies were there at least up through 1879, when Robert was born. A year later they were in Bear Run. However, St Nicholas is just 2 miles up Centre Street (towards Mah City) from Bear Run, so there may not have been a move at all. Robert, also called Robert Y., married Katheryn Elizabeth Kline. They lived in Lansford, which is up the valley, between Tamaqua and Mauch Chunk. I found two children: William, b 1904, and Robert H., b 1919, in the 1920 census. (That’s a remarkable 15 year separation!). William appears to have married a Catheryn Mulcahy and had one child, Delores, in 1929. She may have married someone named Mullen. In 1940 Robert H and his bride Beatrice live with his parents in Lansford. I can’t tell much after 1940. Census stops and death certificates stop. Those are the two most reliable sources of information.

It may be that Jacob and Isabella have living descendants today, but I haven’t found any public family trees that claim him. Probably the records in Lansford (Carbon Co.) would be the best place to look. There is a list of Gillespies posted for there, but only names, no dates. I decided not to pursue it at this time. Margaret Born late in 1864, Margaret was one of the youngest children (which is a little unusual… you expect the first girl to be named after her mother, not the last). In 1880 she was listed as At School, which would be expected of a 15 year old. But something happened, and in 1900 she was a patient in the Pennsylvania State Lunatic Hospital near Harrisburg, which is where she died in 1910, according to her DC:

She had been in the asylum for 24 years when she died, ie since 1886, when she was 21. It is unlikely she was retarded, since she had been in school at 15. More likely something like schizophrenia, which tends to onset in early adulthood (I think… I’m no expert).

Ellen Born 1862, probably in Thomaston, like Liza. She shows up in the 1870 and 1880 censuses in the family. By 1900 she would have been 38. Nobody by that name shows up. Either she was married or dead. If she died between 1906 and 1944 there should be a DC with her parents name and spouse, if any .There is none that I could find. Therefore I think it most likely she died between 1880 and 1906 if she married, or between 1880 and 1900 if she didn’t.

Robert Born Jan 1, 1867 (by the baptismal record North Parrish Episcopal in Ashland) , the last of the children of Charles and Margaret. You would think this would be easy. But it is surprisingly hard to be certain of a relationship in the absence of a smoking gun like a DC.

He lived with his folks in 1870 and 1880, but by 1900 they were gone and he was single, living as a boarder in the home of the Davenport family in St Nicholas.

In 1920 he lives in Shenandoah (just a little north, but still in the valley),

with a wife Kathryn, age 48, and a daughter Ruth, 23. This is where it gets confusing. Ruths last name is a line, to indicate “Ditto”, ie Gillespie, but written over that is Davis.(Or was Davis written first and then the line?) She is widowed. My guess is the census taker jumped the gun on the last name and corrected it when he found out she was widowed. To make matters worse there are two kids, James Davis, 4, and Erma Davis, 6mo, listed not as Ruth’s children as you would expect, but as nephew and niece to the Head. I am somewhat at a loss to understand how this could be. Who did these kids belong to?

The thing that makes me think that this isn’t some other Robert is that he lists both his parents as Scottish. But Ruth, at 23, would have been born in 1897. She should have been in the 1900 census, where Robert was listed as a single boarder. Could she be Kathryn’s daughter, not Robert’s?

I looked to 1930 expecting clarity, but Robert is not in. Nor is Kathryn. Nor is Ruth. I do find a 14 year old James Davis living in Pottsville in the home of Robert and Bertha Burdess, their kids and Roberts mother. James is listed as a nephew.

So the upshot of this is : I don’t know if Robert left any descendents. I rather think not. James and Erma look like orphans. If Ruth had had kids they would have been with her. Maybe she remarried and that’s why I don’t find her

in 1930. But I couldn’t find any plausible marriages in the area between 1920 and 1930.