Humphrey’s brother JAMES

On page 13 of Marvin’s correspondence he states that James is a brother of Humphrey and has at least three children, Henry, Humphrey, and Margaret.  Ralph doesn’t list James as a brother of Humphrey, but he does account for James in his “Gillmores of Sligo County” as James of Stonehall, and lists two of his children, Henry and Margaret.

According to Ancestry.com, Ireland, Catholic Parish Registers, James Gillmore married Mary Kearns on 11 Nov 1836, Killenummery, Sligo and Leitrim, Ireland.  The same source shows that their daughter Margaret’s parents are James Gillmore and Mary Kearns.  James would likely have been born before 1817.

I haven’t found any information on their son Humphrey.

Ralph shows their son Henry Gillmor of Stonehall, born about 1837.  He married Elizabeth Jenks on September 18, 1862 in Sligo, Ireland.  Elizabeth was born circa 1844 in Ballysadare, Sligo, Ireland.  Ralph shows they had two children William born in Stonehall, Ballysadare, Sligo, Ireland on September 4, 1865, and Humphry Gillmore of Stonehall born in Stonehall, Ballysadare, Sligo, Ireland on November 10, 1867.  Marvin’s information, page 13, lists Hannah’s siblings “Henry Simpson Gilmore and Henrietta Gilmore, still living there around the old place; plus three brothers in Australia; and a sister in England; and a sister living “in Wicklow”. My own further research shows that Henry first married Elizabeth Jenks and had:

William Born in 1865, died in Australia in 1930.

Humphry Born Sligo, 1867, died in Australia in 1955, married Jane Mary Meredith, and had two boys, Robert Henry 1903 to 1958, and William Meredith 1904 to Unknown.

Hessie 1870 and Eliza 1872, and John 1875 and Jane 1877.

Henry’s wife Elizabeth died in 1878 and he married Sarah Jane Sleator in1881.  They had Fanny 1884, Hannah 1886, Lillie 1888, Henry Simpson 1890, and Henrietta in 1893.

Ralph shows that James’ daughter “Margaret Gilmore was born in Ballysadare, Sligo, Ireland before 1841.  She married Thomas Pettipiece on June 3, 1858 in Callooney, Ballysadare, Sligo, Ireland.  Thomas was born before 1838 in of Cloonacurrah, Ballysadare, Sligo, Ireland.  Further research shows that they had one son James Pettipiece born in 1858, and his mother, Margaret died in 1866.  Thomas Pettipiece remarried Fanny Irwin and they had at least six children.

©2017 Linda C Robinson

Marvin Gilmore’s Correspondence

About Humphrey Gillmor

And The Gillmore/Gilmor Family

Of Sligo, Ireland

When I started researching my Gillmore ancestors, I found Ralph Clark’s genealogy web site.  It was very well documented and had a lot of new information that I didn’t have previously.  Imagine my surprise a few years later when I found a treasure trove of correspondence from a Marvin Gilmore among my grandmother’s things.  He originally wanted to know about his father’s family, and then expanded to wanting to know about the extended Gilmore/Gillmore families.  He wrote to people worldwide that he knew to be family and pushed and prodded them to send him family information.  Evidently, my grandmother gave him quite a lot of information, and contacts, and they corresponded for a number of years about his search for the Gillmores.  What I found were the letters he had written to my grandmother.  There are over 50 pages of letters, diagrams, charts, and copies of letters he had received and borrowed from family members concerning the Gillmores.  The information in the correspondence expanded my Gillmore tree beyond belief!  I wish I had my grandmother’s side of the correspondence as well.  Some of the information seems to conflict with what Mr Clark has on his website, but in many cases I have been able to use Marvin’s information to do more research and expand on what he had discovered.   Shortly after I found this correspondence, I tried to contact Ralph Clark, but was unsuccessful, so I have set it aside for several years, debating about what to do with it.

Genealogy nut that I am, I have taken a couple of DNA tests.  I don’t do much with them, but I do look at the trees of matches, who have people that match mine in our online family trees.  I don’t even look at the matches who don’t have matching people in our family trees.  I occasionally get inquiries from people in the latter group, wondering if I can find a match anywhere.  Generally, I can’t and send them a short reply to that effect.  Imagine my surprise this summer, though, when I was given a little information about someone’s family, and I was able to go to my tree, and right away find where we matched!  This person is a grand or great grandchild of my great great grandfather Humphrey’s brother!  Without the information from Marvin’s correspondence and the additional research I had done, I would never have been able to find our relationship!  Ralph Clark didn’t show any siblings of Humphrey.

This event of the DNA match, got me moving, and I realized that it was imperative that I share the information from Marvin’s correspondence.  I don’t imagine that it is always correct, and it isn’t complete, but being able to find the DNA match that easily, proved to me that his information is at least a valid starting point for more of the Gillmore family genealogy.

I spent a lot of time going over all the information again, correcting mistakes I had made, finding even more family members, and now that I am about ready to start putting the information on my blog, I am finding more questions about some of the material.  I will try to point out differences between Ralph’s information and Marvin’s.  There are some longstanding family questions, that I have tried to explore and in doing that I have, without proof, inserted some people into the family tree.  There are a couple of family groupings that I believe Marvin had wrong, i.e. brother’s not cousins or uncles.  In all these cases I will provide my reasoning.  The information in Marvin’s correspondence is in most cases not able to be “proven”, with birth, death, marriage or other information.  Most of his information is from family members or friends of the family, and is likely to be incorrect at times, but I have been able to build on his information in ways that make sense to me, so I feel the information is generally valid.

I am certain that my great grandfather is Robert Allingham Gillmore.  This information has been passed down to me by my mother and her mother.  Ralph Clark shows Robert’s father as being Humphrey.  There are two citations, one a book, and the other Robert’s death certificate, that might show Humphrey as Robert’s father, but I don’t have access to either of these items.  My mother wrote a story about her grandfather Robert Gillmore and names his parent’s names as Humphrey and Margaret (Allingham), but I don’t know when she wrote the story, and I think it was after Marvin had shared some information with my grandmother.  From Marvin’s correspondence it sounds like my grandmother wasn’t sure about the name of Robert’s father, but in October of 1945 Marvin wrote “I now find that my great grandfather (your grandfather) was neither Hugh, nor Hamp, but Humphrey.  His first wife was undoubtedly Margaret, nee Allingham, but his second wife was very definitely one Jane Gilmor Gillmor.”  He had gotten this information from some letters that a relative had loaned him.  The letters were written to Robert N. Gilmore around 1906 and referenced Humphrey’s estate.  A will mentioning Robert’s sister Rebecca further proves this association.

Ralph names Humphrey’s parents as William and an unknown woman.  Again, I don’t have access to his citations to prove or disprove this fact.  On page 13 of Marvin’s correspondence he was told that Humphrey’s parents were Hugh and Anne (Lawson) Gilmore.  There is a record that might give more insight into whether it was William or Hugh, but again I am unable to access the record.  I did find a record showing that Humphrey’s second wife’s father was named Hugh.  Again, this is information from people who knew or were related to the Gillmores in Ireland and they may have been hazy in their recollections.

To recap, my 3 times great grandfather was probably William (or Hugh) Gillmore and his wife was likely Anne Lawson.  Based on Humprhey’s age they would have been born around 1780, possibly in Sligo, Ireland.

Ralph doesn’t list any siblings for Humphrey, but on page 13 of his correspondence Marvin writes “This Hannah’s grandfather was James Gillmor, which gives us the name of another Humphrey Gillmor brother to go with George and William.”  In a letter from Rebecca (Gillmor) Craig, she writes “My second son is called Walter after W.E.”  I don’t have any proof, but added a Walter as another brother of Humphrey.  So far, I can’t find anything at all on a Walter, so this is likely wrong.  As to George, he is the grand or great grandfather of the person who contacted me with matching DNA!

 

There were probably sisters as well, but I haven’t found any information to that effect.

There was evidently a long running discussion between my grandmother and Marvin as to the correct spelling of Gillmore.  Grandma spelled it with 2 l’s.  Marvin had grown up with one l.  I have found it both ways during my research, and often in Ireland the e was left off.  For the most part I am going to use the ll with an e for convenience.
© 2017 Linda C Robinson

Gillmore DNA

Genealogy nut that I am, I have taken a couple of DNA tests.  I don’t do much with them, but I do look at the trees of matches, who have people in their family tree that match mine in our online family trees.  When there is a match to someone on Ancestry.com, you can also see other people who are DNA matches to both of you.  I don’t even look at the matches who don’t have matching people in our family trees.  I occasionally get inquiries from people in the latter group, wondering if I can find a match anywhere.  Generally, I can’t and send them a short reply to that effect.  Imagine my surprise this summer, though, when I was given a little information about someone’s family, and I was able to go to my tree, and right away find where we matched!  This person is a grand or great grandchild of my great-great-grandfather Humphrey’s brother!  Unfortunately, there weren’t any other people who had matching DNA to both of us.

One of the longstanding brick walls of my genealogy research is the “nieces” who were living with my great grandfather Robert A Gillmore at the time my great-great-grandmother Flora Turner came to Colorado to stay with her brother.  I have been able to track their lives later on, but I cannot with certainty be sure who their parents were or where they came from.   Or when they came to live with Robert.   There have been times that I have wondered if they were really cousins.  I have a lot of new information about the Gillmore family, but I can’t prove anything about their parentage.  Maybe they were children of friends who died in the mining camps, and not really his nieces?  Unfortunately, because one of them who married, married a Turner, there is very little chance of DNA proving that they are Gillmores, because most of the known Gillmores are Turners as well.  That is why I was disappointed that there weren’t any other people matching the person mentioned above.

I have a lot of new information on the Gillmore family because I found a large amount of correspondence from a Marvin Gilmore to my grandmother.  This event of the DNA match, got me moving, and I realized that it was imperative that I share the information from Marvin’s correspondence.  I don’t imagine that it is always correct, and it isn’t complete, but being able to find the DNA match that easily, proved to me that his information is at least a valid starting point for more of the Gillmore family genealogy.

I’ve been working on this for a couple of months now, reverifying information that I had found several years ago, and finding new information and family connections.  AND a couple of nights ago, while doing some more research, I found a descendant of Robert’s brother John that I was a DNA match to!  And John’s descendants wouldn’t have had any Turner blood!  And when I checked to see if there were people who we both had DNA matches with in common there were.  AND several of those trees showed one of Robert’s nieces as an ancestor!  The “nieces” really were his nieces.  They are Gillmores!  Of course, I still can’t prove who their parents were or how they came to be with Robert. 

I was going to wait until I had everything completed before I started putting up the information, but there is so much, it needs to be put up a little at a time.  The recent DNA revelation has convinced me to get started sharing this information, so I will soon begin putting this information up on my blog.  I hope you enjoy and can make use of it. 

© 2017 Linda C Robinson