Correction: Wyche-Tillett book authors' kinship

Clarence A. Wyche (1878-1947), whose picture is shown here, was a dedicated genealogy researcher and a first cousin, once removed, of author Charles W. Allison (and of Aunt Mame & Poppa Henry).

Charles W. Allison, son of Jeannette Tillett Allison and Rev. Thomas J. Allison, was named after his uncle Charles Walter Tillett of Charlotte, N. C., and compiled The Reverend John Tillett Family History.  (Our great-grandfather was another of his uncles; therefore, Charles Allison was a first cousin of our grandparents.)

Wyche Ancestry

We have one family name which can be traced back in history much further than any other surname (to the 12th century & earlier), and that is Wyche.  This was the maiden name of Poppa Henry's grandmother, Elizabeth Jenkins Wyche Tillett.

The Wyches even had a saint in the family.  In the 13th century, the brother of one of our direct ancestors was Richard de Wyche, Bishop of Chichester & Saint Richard in the Roman Catholic Church.  The name Wyche is supposed to mean salt spring.  It is also short for the town of Droitwich, which is located in an area of Worcestershire where salt has been extracted since ancient times.

Our 17th century emigrant ancestor was Henry Wyche II (1648-1714).  He was born in Surrey County, England, traveled to America in the late 1670's, and settled in Surry County, Virginia.  Henry's grandfather was Richard Wyche (1554-1621), Gentleman and Mercer; Richard was a shipowner, merchant, and one of the charter directors of the English East India Company.

According to a Wikipedia entry, Richard was also "among the adventurers of the Muscovy Company," chartered in 1555 and the first major English joint-stock trading company.  It monopolized English trade with Russia for about 150 years and survived as a trading company until the Russian Revolution of 1917, after which it became a charity.  I just found this information today...I am moved that this ancestor of ours was involved, early on, with a private organization which reportedly has sustained a 450 year history, or the entire period during which the twelve or so additional generations of this man's descendants have lived...The Wikipedia item on Richard Wyche says that several locations in the Arctic region were named after him:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Wyche_(merchant)

Richard Wyche married Elizabeth Saltonstall, daughter of Sir Richard Saltonstall, Member of Parliament and Lord Mayor of London.  [She had a first cousin Sir Richard Saltonstall who established a Massachusetts colony in 1630.]  The couple had many sons; the Honorable Nathaniel Wyche lived in India and was President of the East India Company in the late 1650's.  Another son was the Right Honorable Sir Peter Wyche, Ambassador to Constantinople (Ottoman Empire),  who married Jane Meredith. Their children included (another) Sir Peter Wyche, Sir Cyril Wyche, and Lady Jane (Wyche) Granville.  Rt. Hon. Sir Peter Wyche was one of the Chancellors of Oxford University, and his sons Sir Cyril and Sir Peter were among the founding members of the British Royal Society.  Lady Jane was Countess of Bath and Lady of the Bedchamber to Henrietta Maria of France, Queen Consort of King Charles I.* 

Sir Cyril Wyche, scholar and longtime Member of Parliament, was a first cousin of our ancestor, Henry Wyche II.  His portrait, whose image is shown here, hangs in the National Portait Gallery of London.  Henry was the son of Henry Wyche (1604-1678), Rector of Sutton in Surrey, England, and his wife Ellen Bennett, daughter of Ralph Bennett, Esquire.

According to the Tillett book, "one of the oldest streets in the old walled city of London proper was Wyche St."  Today, there is a Wyche St. in Henderson, North Carolina (Vance County), which was named after either James Wyche or his sister Sally Wyche Reavis. 

There is a new, interactive website developed by and for descendants of James & Pamela Wyche of North Carolina:

http://www.benwychefamily.com/

*I added the above paragraph about Richard Wyche's family to expand the short Wikipedia article on him, since this information was documented in the James Wyche Family History, a section of The Reverend John Tillett Family History, published in 1955.

The Wyche section of the Tillett book is dedicated to Clarence A. Wyche, a first cousin of our great-grandfather Henry A. "Gus" Tillett.  Clarence, who died in 1947, did most all of the research about the early ancestry of the Wyches.  Charles W. Allison, the book's compiler, was another first cousin of Gus and Clarence, being a son of Jeannette Tillett Allison (Gus' big sister who looked after him following their mother's death).

Picture of & letter written by Mary Smith Tillett

Here is a transcription of a letter written by our great-grandmother a century ago. It was addressed to Miss Nellie Cannon in Abilene, Texas, who later became Nellie Parramore, mother of Nellie Sellers. The Tillett and Parramore families were apparently very close! Nellie Sellers transcribed the letter; later on her daughter shared it with Sandra, who shared it with our mother Ione. Ione jotted on it that as children they called Mrs. Parramore "Aunt Nellie."

Mary Tillett, or Mamie as she was called by her husband, was in her late thirties and away from her four "dear children." Poppa Henry, the youngest, would have been only two-and-a-half years old then. (I don't know what kind of ailment put her in the hospital.) Oh, and the reference to war evidently refers to the Spanish-American War:

Galveston, Texas
March 8th, 1898

My dear daughter:

Your nice letter came yesterday & I am so delighted that you came out so well in your examination. I do feel hurt tho' because Sam is not next to you (I mean because he is not second best). Yesterday I came to stay at the St. Mary's Infirmary because I could not like the Sealy Hospital. They are not prepared for private patients-____. I do not like to have ____ (that is the nurses and all do not) except Dr. Paine & he didn't want me to come here, but I came anyhow. He is a fine old gentleman, but he has a head as hard as a rock. I wish you could walk into my pretty room with its large east window & elegant furniture tho' simple after all. The Sisters of Charity do all the nursing & oh they are so gentle and kind. My meals are beautifully served in lovely china. I can look down on a pretty yard with green grass, trees, and pretty flowers growing in it. Among other things there are such handsome palms with leaves as long as a parasol. The day we got to Galveston we went out for a sail on a real sailboat. It would roll & dip about on the waves & I was so 'fraid it would turn over, but it didn't. How I did wish for you all & the dear children. We also viewed the big gun & I talked with one of Uncle Sam's soldiers a little. He was mighty proud of his blue coat & gun & I told him if we did have war I expected they'd be in front of the whole crowd of runners except me, for on such occasions as fire etc. I generally lead everything as a person "of fleetfootedness." Enough of foolishness for one letter. Tell your dear mother that her fame as a cakemaker has spread abroad in the land & is fully established at Sealy Hospital. All who tasted it praised it greatly. Here I waited to listen to a voice oh so sweet! chanting somewhere, I suppose over in the Chapel. I can't hear the words but the sweet rich melody rises & sweeps over the air like great billows of melody. For fear of tiring you, I will stop. Any time you can write, any of you, I shall be grateful. Give my love to all the friends and kiss the little ones for their homesick mother. With love for you all I am as ever

Yours, Mary Tillett -

Mississippi & Alabama coast travel nostalgia

Does anyone besides me fondly remember eating at the Friendship House Restaurant, on the way to Gulf Shores?

This is the only image I could find on line.  If you ignore the artsy woman with dog, it does look vaguely like I remember.  I didn't know it was a motel, too.  Wonder what happened to the restaurant.

This is kind of funny, but do y'all remember how everyone got excited about eating the free crackers (& butter) that most restaurants provided when you sat down?

In Gulf Shores in the early days, I loved The Dunes restaurant.  I have a black and white picture of the front of it somewhere, if it didn't get torn up by the non-archivally safe album it was in.  Jumbo fried shrimp---yum.

And does anyone remember how we used to have to use dirty, un-air-conditioned "filling station" bathrooms when traveling?  But then we could get a soft drink (in a glass bottle), from the vending machine.  What a treat!  I can still taste the Nehi grape, for some reason, and the occasional Barq's root beer!

Historic Abilene buildings

The City of Abilene, Texas, has some photos of historic buildings & historic sites on their website, including two Texas Pacific Railroad buildings and the Elks Club, which is presumably the one to which our great-grandfather David Graham Hill belonged:

http://www.abilenetx.com/About/tpdepot.htm

Tillett - Wyche - Smith family history in North Carolina & my visit there

On Mother's Day, I was in Charlotte, North Carolina! While there I looked for Reverend John Tillett's grave at Elmwood Cemetery, but I couldn't find it. The place is huge, and I haven't located any directions to his grave.

I used the inspiration of a national genealogy meeting in Raleigh to make a six-day visit to the state...to see a few of the places the Tilletts and Wyches lived, and also to consider whether I might want to move there. I took the train and rented a car; just attended about a day & a half of the conference.

I do love the scenery in the Piedmont region: endless green hills and forests. And I like the fact that the state has actually put money into the passenger train system!

I started out in Richmond County east of Charlotte on Saturday, May 9th. [Ione's notes had indicated that Richmond Co., Virginia, was the Covingtons' location after Maryland but that was an error.] I found and took pictures of the graves of Elizabeth J. Wyche Tillett and her daughter Laura Tillett in Rockingham.

Then I located the old church which the Covingtons attended in the late 1700's (Cartledge Creek Baptist)--- according to a library book I'd consulted [A History of Richmond County by J.E. & I.C. Huneycutt, 1976]---and took a look at the Blewett Falls area of the Pee Dee River, with two old Blewett graves. William Blewett came from England in the early 1700's, having obtained one of the earliest land grants in the area and is probably one of our ancestors through Winifred Stone Covington, widow of Henry Covington who died in the War of 1812. A dam was built at Blewett Falls about a hundred years ago, so there is more of a lake with a spillway than a waterfall.

Another day I stopped in the town of Burlington, formerly Company Shops, from which some of the Tillett letters were written. The town is in the Greensboro vicinity and was established by the North Carolina Railroad as their maintenance site. Next I found the historic marker for the Bingham School for boys in Mebane, formerly Mebaneville, where Gus Tillett attended secondary school. (Happened to find out at the conference this is pronounced "Mebbin.") I made a swing through Pittsboro in Chatham County, where he was born and where there is now an organic grocery co-operative...Didn't ever make it to Chapel Hill to see the university.

Tuesday I found our ancestor James Wyche's grave in the woods of Granville County, about 40 miles north of Raleigh, thanks to the directions someone had put on line; although it took a while since the headstones aren't visible from the road. (He died in Raleigh at the age of 59, in 1845.) Then I took pictures of a house that may have been theirs; I so much wanted to find the "old Tar River plantation home," established in 1825 after the Wyches moved from Brunswick County, Va. If it was the right house it's been drastically remodeled as a hunting lodge.

I believe their plantation must have been a tobacco plantation, as this area was big in tobacco and James was part-owner of a tobacco warehouse. There used to be an old mill on their land, but I didn't know where to look for the ruins. James and Pamela Evans Wyche had 14 children, 13 of whom lived to adulthood; all of their children (two daughters and eleven sons) attended college. Elizabeth J. W. Tillett later returned to the Tar River home to have at least two or three of her babies. She had been about seven years old when they moved here.

John and Elizabeth Tillett had nine children, six of whom lived to adulthood: Jimmy, Laura, Jeannette, Wilbur, Charlie, and Gus. During the War Between the States the eldest, James Wyche Tillett, was away serving in the Confederate Army. Elizabeth died during this period, when Gus was about two; the next year John Tillett married Elizabeth's widowed sister, Louisa Young Wyche (Speed). All of the Tilletts attended college, as well, although the war prevented James from finishing his formal education.

After I came back to Florida I realized there was a Smith plantation and graveyard in Granville County, also (Mary Benjamin Smith Tillett's forebears on her father's side); I hadn't remembered that during the trip. They were farther north. The other Smith ancestors (her mother's side) were located in Caswell County,* farther west along the Va. state line.

In Raleigh I found the 1862 Raleigh & Gaston/ Seaboard RR building, which has been preserved, and took a lot of pictures inside the State Capitol (1840). James Wyche was involved with both of these entities, as railroad president and legislator, although he died before the RR building was built.

*In reviewing online Smith information, it appears that the Samuel H. Smiths may have lived in the Raleigh area for a few years, as Wake County is supposed to be where Anne William Smith was born and where her parents married...There sure was a lot of intermarrying among that clan. It looks like, in marrying Benjamin Men Smith, Anne married her father's first cousin. Many of the Smiths moved to Dallas County, Arkansas, probably during the 1840's.