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