Luster Earl Colley to Gregg Leon Mattocks, letter, 14 October 1997

Source: Luster Earl Colley to Gregg Leon Mattocks, letter, 14 October 1997.

October 14, 1997

Dear Gregg:

Oma sequestered all my birthday greeting mail that arrived before my birthday party.  some way, your card got by her.  So I got it directly.

My birthday was predated a little bit to Sunday, since everyone has more time on sunday.  Aldine and I went over to Barbie’s house for my birthday party.  Barbie made ham loaf and all the fixins that I like and my birthday cake was a black raspberry pie.  Barbie knows what I like.  When everyone was full of good food, they brought out a heap of mail from my descendants, that they had been saving.  They demanded that I read it all out loud and pass around the pictures.  I never had so much mail all at one time and had so many say such nice things about me.  Fathers usually have to be dead to get so much favorable fan mail.  It was so much fun I would like to be 80 again next year.

I have a new status symbol as a Family History Expert.  I have been working as a substitute at the Mormon Library for several years.  Just recently they gave me a promotion, and I am now a member of the regular staff.  There was no pay raise.  Everyone on the staff gets the same pay, nothing.  But I feel well paid in fun and being able to associate with the nicest, smartest people in the whole world.

I have been working on several projects.  One project is to gather data for an eventual history of Butler Township, St. Clair Township, MO.  A lot of your ancestors came from that place.  I doubt I will ever live so long as to write the book, but maybe you and your mother can take over where I leave off.

I have a working version of a program I wrote in “C” language that I hope will combine census records in a new useful way.  I have entered a lot of data from the 1900, 1910, and 1920 census of Butler township in a raw data base.  I hope to do the 1880 census for Butler Twp this winter.  The new idea of my program is that it will combine a sorted version of the combined censuses so the people will be grouped together.  That way, you will be able to see on a single screen how a person ages and how their situation changed as the decades pass.  I also have entered a lot of WW1 draft data and a lot of marriage records for Butler Twp and other parts of St. Clair County.

I made photocopies of the original draft records for your great grandfather WEARS and your great grandfather COLLEY.  I will enclose a photo-copy of the one for GGfather WEARS.  Both Doris and I existed at that time as mere embryos, so I imagine the registration of prospective fathers for military service was something of a shock to the prospective mothers.  Now as I take a closer look at the copy, I see that Doris had already been born.  She was born in August and I wasn’t born until October.

Just a short time ago a correspondent sent me some new material about our SAYLOR family.  The best way to explain this is to make an abbreviated Ahnentafel which I will extend a bit for later purpose:

1. Gregg MATTOCKS
2. Leon MATTOCKS
3. Carol Lee COLLEY
6. Earl COLLEY
12. James Alvin COLLEY
13. Vida MILLER
26. Walter MILLER

[Earl makes a mistake here.  Catherine Gilley was the mother, not the wife of Walter Miller.]

27. Catharine GILLEY b 2 May 1840 Washington Co. TN, d MO
52. William MILLER
54. Abraham (Absalom) GILLIS (GILLEY) married 12 Oct 1837 Washington Co. TN
55. Mary SAILOR (SAYLOR)
104. Henry MILLER
105. Hannah BISHOP b Chester District, SC ca1884; d Benton Co. MO after 1850
110. John SAYLOR b 1775 Lebanon Twp. Lancaster Co. PA; d TN; m 26 Dec 1797 Rockingham Co. TN
111. Betsy KYSOR
210. James BISHOP b PA; d Hopkins Co. KY
222. Henry KISOR (KYSOR)
420. Nicholas BISHOP b DE, d Chester District SC.

Items 111. and 222. I have long suspected were true, but the new data I received gives me much more confidence.  The marriage of John SAYLOR and Betsy KYSOR is recorded in the book “Rockingham Co., VA Marriages 1778-1816” by Strickler.  The book can be found in many Genealogical libraries.  The new data I got goes back several generations and says the SAYLORs were Mennonites from Switzerland.  I haven’t yet examined this story well enough to want to give it my blessing.  I sent in a request to the Main Mormon Library in Salt Lake City for a film that I hope will add some detailed proof to the story.

While I was in the process of writing this letter the mail man delivered our mail.  I received my copy of the quarterly Bulletin of the Chester District Genealogical Society.  I have subscribed to it for many years and sometimes contribute material for them to print.  In this issue is one thing of particular interest to us.  I will enclose photo-copies of three pages.  The interesting part is the inset on page 112, but I copied the preceding and following page to include some background.

Henry BISHOP was an older brother of our James BISHOP (James BISHOP is number 210 on the previous Ahnentafel).  Henry BISHOP was a Captain in the Patriot army.  The whole BISHOP family with all their Patriot neighbors formed a refugee train of ox carts and such to retreat from the British and Tory threat.  They headed for Charlotte, NC where there was a stronger Patriot army for protection.  The men with the refugee train went to attack the British at Hanging Rock to turn them away from attacking the refugee women and children.  Henry BISHOP was wounded at the Hanging Rock battle.  He was carried in the refugee train to Charlotte, where he died of his wounds.  I have long searched for additional records about the battle and the refugee experience.  The British burned houses and killed all the live-stock that the refugees could not carry along with them.  I suppose most historians did not think the battle at Hanging Rock was very important, because not enough soldiers were killed there.

I often scan the data you sent me a long time ago, and think how much time you have invested.  Since I live in the Northeast, I have been aware that our County Library may have some sources that have not been readily available to you.  I hope to take advantage of that, but I never seem to stay on one subject very long.  I keep getting diverted by peripheral quests.

I hope your mother can soon get her life back on track and have time to pursue our mutual interest in family history.  She tells me that property values in the peninsula are so poor that she expects a difficult time in selling her house.  We have the same surplus real estate situation here, and I would have a difficult time selling my house.  I would really like to avoid the tribulations of being a home owner and move back to Columbia, MO.  The Missouri Historical Society is there and the MO University Library.  As an alumnus of the University and an ex-teacher, I would be eligible for using a lot of the School facilities.

Tell me about the computer you are now using.  I still have my old 386 DX machine.  For a long time I also had another machine on my desk based on a 286 mother board that I bought second hand for $29.  But I could not run WINDOWS on that.  I resisted WINDOWS long after most of my friends were using it, but almost all software now requires windows.  When JUNO (no cost internet access) was offered it was the last straw.  JUNO requires WINDOWS.  Being too much of a tightwad to pay for “Intel inside”, I upgraded to a K5 processor made by AMD.  It works great, and I don’t see how paying the price for a Pentium would have given me any better service.  Other components are also gettig cheap, so I have 32 Meg of ROM, a slow PC disk reader, and a 2.5 Gig hard drive.

I really make good use of having two computers side by side.  I do a lot of writing.  I use the old 386 as if it were a dedicated word processor, and use the K5 machine to look up data as the subject of my writing demands.  It is possible to switch windows on a single screen to get that result, but my system allows me to have two full screens visible at the same time.

I would be glad to hear of your adventures, but I know that like all of us, your time is fully engaged.  If the next I hear from you is my 90th birthday card, I will understand.  But I will be pleased to hear sooner.

With the affection I have for all my extensive clan,

Old grandfather

Earl