| Summer 2000 | Vol. 3, No. 1 |
|---|
Hard to believe, but it’s been a whole year already since our LFA reunion in Dubuque, Iowa. And it’s even harder to believe that our next reunion is just 11 short months away!
This time, we’ll be gathering the clan in the Council Bluffs, Iowa and Omaha, Nebraska area, and reunion coordinator Barb Samoore is already hard at work making plans.
The reunion will be held from June 20-23, 2001, at the Best Western of the Bluffs motel in Council Bluffs (for more about the site selection process and area attractions, see Barb’s "Coordinator’s Corner" column, below). Rooms will cost $55 per night, and it’s not too early to make reservations – just call the motel at (712) 322-3150, talk to our contact Stephanie Anson, and ask for the "Loughrey Reunion."
Special events being planned include a poetry contest for poems about the Loughrey family, with the entrants reading their compositions at a Thursday or Friday night "coffee house" session, held in conjunction with our usual genealogy swap. The traditional Loughrey memorial service will be held at the Lewis and Clark Memorial, located on a scenic overlook on the bluffs. And there will be a "Wall of Fame" in our hospitality room, where we can mount pictures of Loughrey ancestors, in chronological order. Finally, for our big Saturday night banquet, Barb is hoping to book a professional genealogist as a guest speaker.
We’ll be sure to fill you in on all the new reunion plans, as they’re made, so watch this space in the next Loughrey Lines...and if the next year passes as quickly as the last, we’ll see you in Council Bluffs very, very soon!
In early April, the combined Loughrey family tree project was finally
completed, and has produced a database which now contains more than
3,000 direct descendants of James Loughrey, Sr...and more than
10,000 people in all (including those in the Carroll/Carrell,
Riley and hundreds of other lines who have married into the
Loughrey family).
Trees and data were contributed by Denise Ayers, Elizabeth Fuller, Lee Gartner, Mary Hagen, Don Laughrey, Kelli Ann Marks, Carol Mays, Jan McCrackin, Rose Marie Petersen, Mary Saban, Bruce Samoore, Jackie Schattner, Robin Sloan, and Steve Tardio.
Their files also included information provided by Bert Adams, the descendants of James & Ellen (Loughrey) Carrell/Carroll , the descendants of Abraham & Rebecca (Carrell) Franks, Vivian Fuller, Phyllis Jean Pankonin Hughes, the descendants of Peter & Margaret (Carrell) Loughrey, Gayle McLeod, Cheryl Midnight, Delores B. Nielsen, Elaine Pera, Dave Rhoda, Julia Ribbens, Francis Rockefeller and Genelle Stevens...
...and from the publications, The Story of the Loughrey Clan by Peter F. Loughrey, Family History of Descendants of Luther Frimood by Bessie Brown Christianson, John Adam Friermouth of Barryfield, Ontario, Canada and His Descendants by Helen Myers Keys, Richard Penhallow, His Life and Descendants by Aileen Smock DeLong & Lorraine Rivers Harlow, and A History of the Family of Paul Riley (Ryland) and Elizabeth Loughrey Riley of PA, Licking Co., OH and Bureau Co., IL by Phyllis Pankonin Hughes.
This is the most extensive and up-to-date listing of Loughreys available anywhere, and a great debt of thanks is owed to all the contributors.
The database, which will be updated every few months as new data is received, is available to currently paid members of the Loughrey Family Association via a password-protected page on our website – http://www.loughrey.org/tree.htm – and can also be downloaded as a fully-functional GEDCOM file from a members-only mailing list site. (So if you're not yet a member, join today and gain access to this brand new - and very valuable - member benefit!)
Dear Members of the Loughrey Clan:
Time flies when you’re having fun. It seems like our trip to Council Bluffs and Omaha was just last week. It was really the end of September when we visited, and I’ve waited to report on the trip and our October LFA board meeting until I had confirmation from the motel and a signed contract in hand.
The reunion site vote was very close, with the two top contenders being Omaha, NE or a return to the Sheffield, IL, area. All of us love Sheffield, and we do plan to return there sometime, but this time the Omaha area won by a very slight margin.
After the vote, I immediately contacted the Omaha and Council Bluffs area Chamber of Commerces, and received packets of information from both cities.
All the facilities in Omaha were out of our price range. But the people at the Council Bluffs Chamber were wonderful to work with and provided us a list of all the facilities they felt would be suitable four our reunion headquarters. My husband, Bruce, and I visited all the facilities on the list...and several that weren’t on it. As with the Omaha facilities, most were out of our price range, and we were getting a bit worried...but we had one more appointment to go and hope sprang eternal.
The last appointment on our list was a new Best Western motel located on the eastern edge of Council Bluffs. The easy access from Interstate 80 was only the first plus. The rooms are spacious and beautifully furnished. And there’s a huge indoor pool area, game rooms for the kids, and on-site food service.
After a tour of the facility, we sat down to chat with the sales person and were surprised and pleased to find out the price was right. And by guaranteeing to hold our banquet at the motel, a hospitality room will be provided free of charge for the duration of the reunion. The banquet menus presented to us were both delicious and reasonably priced. So after a day of disappointing results, we both felt we had at least one positive recommendation to bring back to the LFA board.
The board held a breakfast meeting in St. Paul on October 10, 1999. After reviewing all the pluses and minuses of the facilities we had visited, the Best Western of the Bluffs was unanimously selected as our site for Reunion 2001.
Bruce and I were also pleased to discover all the exciting historical places to visit in the Council Bluffs area. The Henry Doorly Zoo is considered the best in the country. And side trips can also be arranged to the Strategic Air Command Museum, Father Flanagan’s Boys Town, the Old Market, the Mormon Trail...and on and on and on.
The best part is that the motel provides free shuttle service to most of the historical sites. This area will provide a wonderful spot for a family vacation in conjunction with the meeting of the clan. So I urge all of you to start saving your pennies and circle June 20-23, 2001 on your calendars.
In the meantime, I’ll also be contacting some of you with requests to help in various aspects of planning the event...which I hope will be our best ever!
Until next time,
Barb Samoore
Reunion Coordinator
 |
 |
Dear Members of the Loughrey Family Association:
It is quite some time yet before we all gather at the family reunion on the third weekend of June, 2001, but it’s not too early to start planning for the big event!
I checked out the Council Bluffs motel chosen by reunion coordinator Barb Samoore, and spent a night there. The people were very pleasant and helpful, and the reasonable price definitely won’t break the bank. Barb also has quite a list of things to do in the area... which should make it a very worthwhile vacation for one and all.
In addition to the reunion planning, I would like to see the four limbs of our family tree group up and get better acquainted than they’ve been in the past. The work that Liz Fuller, our dedicated computer person, is doing to get our family tree shaped up should be a big help in this area. I hope we can keep communicating with each other...and make this Loughrey (Laughrey, Loughry, and all the other two dozen spellings) family an even stronger organization.
Finally, I’d like to remind you all, once again, to pay your dues if you haven’t already done so, so we’ll have enough money to maintain our important communications tools...like this newsletter.
Best of health and happiness to one and all,
Bob Loughrey
The big website news this spring was, of course, the addition of our 10,000+ name "Big Tree" (see story above)...but there’s much more happening online as well.
Around the first of the year, the new millenium brought another millennial milestone: our 1,000th visitor to Loughrey.org...and we’ve nearly doubled that as of July 1, only half way into this year. The site continues to attract new traffic, including Loughreys from around the world -- many of whom leave introductions, research requests and invitations for correspondence in our online guestbook. If you haven’t been there in a while, be sure to stop by to see who’s new!
We will soon be adding a Loughrey Veterans’ page to our website, which will list Loughreys and other relatives in our family tree who have served in America’s wars. If you know of any Loughrey veterans, from any period in our history, please forward their name, branch of service, dates of service, notes about injuries, deaths, heroic recognition or interesting stories to Liz Fuller at [email protected]. In addition to recognizing family members who have served their country, this page can help point researchers to military records that can be valuable sources of genealogical and historical information.
Cecelia Elizabeth Eide and Jeff Michael Hankel, who live in Fargo, ND, are engaged to be married on July 1, 2000. When they met in high school and began dating in college, however, they had no idea they shared a common family history. But thanks to their genealogy minded relatives (including Jeff’s grandfather, Howard Best, and Cecelia’s great-aunt, Mary Hagen), they have since learned that they are fourth cousins, once removed: Cecelia is descended from Peter Loughrey and Margaret Carrell’s daughter Margaret Loughrey...while Jeff is a descendant of one of Peter and Margaret’s other daughters, Rhoda.
In the last issue of The Loughrey Lines, we featured a story on the re-creation of a Loughrey coat of arms by LFA member Julia Loughrey Ribbens (her design is the one that has since been adopted as the official crest of the LFA). While traveling in South Africa recently, however, William Loughrey found another version of a Loughrey coat of arms, along with a document explaining the history of the Loughrey name, and listing several 19th century Loughreys who emigrated from Ireland to the U.S.:
 |
 |
The coat of arms and crest, which are significantly different from Julia Ribbens’ design, are described as:
(coat of arms) "Per pale vert and argent in the dexter a lion rampant to the sinister, in the sinister on a mount in dase vert an oak tree proper"
and
(crest) "An arm in armor embowed holding a sword all proper."
The rest of the document says:
"The surname Loughrey or O’Loughrey is an Anglicized form of the Gaelic Irish "O Luachra." The name is of pabranymic origin, that is, it belongs to the category of surnames derived from the first name of the father of the initial bearer. In this instance, the name indicates "son of Luachra," and ancient personal name derived from "luachair," meaning "rushes, sedges. " The O Luachra is predominantly found in Ulster and belong to the sept of Di Fiachra. The name has been wrongly confused with Loughran, which is derived from the Gaelic "O Laurcharian," meaning " the little bright one." O Laucharian was the name of a distinguished ecclesiastical family located in County Armagh.This surname Loughrey was brought to America by Irish immigrants in the nineteenth century. Passenger lists show that Ann Loughrey from Ballygurman sailed on the "Superior" from Derry to Philadelphia in 1852. Edward and Ellen Loughrey from Fahan sailed the same route on board the "Mary-ann" in 1851. In 1849, James and Margaret Loughrey of Lifford sailed from Derry to Philadelphia on the "Envoy" in 1849 and Denis Phil Loughrey sailed on the same boat at the same time. Thomas and Mary Loughrey from Greenhill sailed on the " Superior" in 1851. A twenty-one year old laborer, Daniel Loughrey, sailed from Liverpool to New York on the "West-Point" in July, 1851, and in the same year, Martin Loughrey, a 17-year-old farmer, and his sister, Ellen , aged five, sailed the same route on the "Guy-Mannering. " Irish immigrants often sailed from English ports and Liverpool was the most popular. Mary Loughrey, aged 30, sailed from Galway to New York on the "Cambyses" in August, 1851."
Also on the subject of the Loughrey coat of arms, Eileen Ribbens
Rohde, daughter of LFA crest designer Julia Loughrey Ribbens,
tells us that her mother’s coat of arms design will soon be available
as an adhesive-backed stencil for glass etching. Eileen’s company,
Egress Etch, is producing the stencil and will soon have it
for sale, in several sizes, along with etching kits that contain all
the tools necessary for an etching project. Eileen says glass
etching is a very simple process, which often takes less than an hour
from start to finish. To find out more about glass etching, and the
availability of the Loughrey coat of arms stencil, visit Eileen’s
website at http://www.egressetch.com
, or e-mail her at
[email protected]
LFA member Don Laughrey recently traveled with his wife to the United Kingdom, where they spent 13 days on a tour through London, Wales, Ireland and Scotland. Although more a vacation than a family research trip, the Laughreys did make a stop in Ashburnham, Sussex County, England, where Don’s great, great, great grandfather, John Nash, Sr. was born in 1800 and lived until emigrating to the U.S. in 1841. (John Nash’s daughter, Harriet Nash, married John Calvin Laughrey.)
Don reports that Ashburnham dates back to the 12th century and was originally an estate of 24,000 acres, on which the main house had 82 bedrooms. The estate also included the parish church, two large stables, and many gardens, including an orangery. Today, the property, which has been pared down to 220 acres in more recent times, is a Christian conference retreat center.
Don also says he checked the local phone book and found 30 Nashes still living in the area...as well as a number of Loughreys, Loughrays, and Loughries in other locations throughout the U.K.
(If any other Loughrey Family members travel to historic family locations, we’d love to hear about your trips! Please send your stories to Loughrey Lines editor Liz Fuller, at [email protected])
For those interested information about John Nash, Sr. (whose daughter, Harriet Nash, married John Calvin Laughrey), LFA member Larry J. Gould recently re-copied the 17-page oral history Life of John Nash, Sr., as Related by Him During His Last Illness. The file has now been added to the LFA shared files site at eGroups.com, and anyone who would like a copy, and subscribes to our mailing list, may download the full document. Just go to the eGroups website at http://www.egroups.com and log in with your password. At the list of mailing groups you subscribe to, click on "LFA." Then, when you see the list of features available for the LFA list, click on "Files," and you’ll see a long list of items our members have uploaded to share with other Loughreys. The Nash document is saved as a Microsoft Word file, and can be downloaded by clicking on the file and following the instructions from there. (Note: if you have stored your password with eGroups, you can skip right to the Shared Files page at http://www.egroups.com/files/LFA/) If you don’t yet subscribe to our list, this history, along with the many other Loughrey files available to subscribers – including photos and GEDCOMs – are a great reason to sign up! Just go to http://www.egroups.com/group/LFA and click on "Subscribe."
In our last issue, we reported that Rose Marie Petersen had written to our online discussion list to ask if anyone had any information about the "L.A. Carroll" who is known to have taken pictures at a May, 1914 double Golden Anniversary celebration for Lucinda Mills (daughter of Garner C. Mills and Martha Loughrey) and her husband Lars Petersen, and Lucinda’s brother Edward Mills and his wife Mary Rhinard. The anniversary party was a family-style dinner at the Danish Brotherhood hall in Sheffield, IL, and Rose Marie was hoping to find descendants of the photographer, who might have further information or more pictures of the event. Little did she know, however, that her simple request would trigger a classic genealogical mystery.
First, in response to Rose Marie’s initial query, Liz Fuller searched the Loughrey family tree database she was assembling, and found the only "L.A. Carroll" in our records was Leroy Ardell Carroll (1864-1953), who married Emma Unruh. Unfortunately for Rose Marie, however, we had no records of children for Leroy and Emma, and the trail seemed to be at a dead end.
A few weeks later, however, Rose Marie was searching through old issues of the Sheffield (IL) Times, and found two intriguing notices. One, from July, 1911, said "Miss Maud Carroll of Chicago visited her parents Mr. and Mrs. L. A. Carroll." And the other, from August, 1908, noted that a "Mrs. C. A. Waters was visiting her brother, L.A. Carroll, and fell backward while rocking on the front porch." According to our family tree records, Leroy Ardell Carroll had neither a daughter nor a living sister at that time (his only known sister, Mary E. Carroll, died in infancy). Also, the Leroy Ardell Carroll in our records was known to have lived in Clinton, Iowa for more than 50 years, including the 1910s period in question...but the Leroy mentioned in the newspaper items seems to have been living in Sheffield or Annawan (very close to the Iowa border, but definitely in Illinois). So we began to wonder: could there have been two Leroy Carrolls?
A few days later, Mary Saban dug into the 1880 Bureau Country Census for Sheffield, IL, and did indeed find Leroy Carroll (age 28 and listed as a "painter"), his wife, Eva A. Carroll (age 25), and their daughter, Maud C. Carroll (age 2), living in Sheffield at the time. (Note, this would put Leroy’s birth year at about 1852 or 53, 10-12 years earlier than the April 22,1864 date in our records for the Iowa Leroy Carroll).
After Mary’s tip, Rose Marie checked the 1900 census for Sheffield, and found the same family there, this time with the addition of daughter Jennie E. Carroll, born in February, 1881. She also found ads in the Sheffield Times for Leroy Carroll’s paint and wallpaper business in that town.
Coincidentally, however, the Leroy Ardell Carroll who lived nearby in Iowa was also listed as a "painter" in the 1910 census...and as a " retired decorator" in his 1953 obituary, which Elaine Pera found in the Clinton Herald, and which Mary Hagen forwarded for this discussion. The obituary also noted that this Leroy Carroll was, like the other, born in Annawan, IL, lived in Clinton for 54 years (since about 1899), and was married to Emma Unruh in 1902. It also makes no mention of children among either his surviving or deceased relations.
Thus, there now seem to be two possibilities:
So far, the mystery remains unsolved...but the key seems to lie in the period between the 1900 Sheffield census, which shows Leroy, Eva, Maud and Jennie Carroll in Sheffield, and the 1910 Clinton census, which shows Leroy, Emma and Leroy’s mother, Mary E. Carroll, living in Iowa.
If anyone is interested in exploring the mystery further, the places to start would probably be the 1910 Sheffield or 1900 Clinton censuses (which could confirm the existence of two Leroys, if one is shown living in each place in those years), or perhaps a search for a death record for Eva A. Carroll sometime between 1900 and 1902. And if you find any useful information that might help us solve this conundrum...please let us know!
Last year, Laurie Gee (daughter of Patricia Loughrey Fong) wrote to LFA secretary treasurer Lee Gartner to say that the property her new house is on in northern California borders Castle Rock State Park...and that while looking at a park map, Laurie noticed an area of the park called the "Loughry Woods."
Laurie says she asked the park rangers about the Woods, but all they knew is that it’s now an "experimental" forest. Laurie kept digging, however, and a call to the local propane users’ group (which is also interested in area history and environmental issues) turned up a couple of items containing a bit more background.
The was a first letter, written to the propane group’s historian in 1996, from Alice Whelan, who said she and her husband, Emmett, bought Castle Rock Ranch in 1942 and noted that the "Loughrys" were living on their property nearby about the same time.
The second document Laurie received was an excerpt from an environmental study, done in 1997 or 1998, which noted:
"At some point in the early 20th century, the James P. Loghry family purchased a denuded (or burnt over) ridge in the northern edge of the (area), just north of the Los Altos Gun Club. Loghry planted a selection of non-native trees in what he considered to be a "demonstration" forest. In 1944, the family donated the acreage to the Department of State Forestry. Forestry declared the parcel a "State Forest," but apparently did little in the unit until the mid-1960s. The Loghrys continued to live there until the late 1940s or early 1950s, when they moved to Santa Cruz. The Loghry house was still standing in 1966, but now only a crude fireplace-chimney, mantled in green moss, remains, plus the pad where the house was once sited."
This is all we’ve heard so far, however – so if anyone else knows more about the Loughrys/Loghrys and their connection to the Loughry Woods, please fill us in!
When LFA president Bob Loughrey attended the annual reunion of the Jeremiah Loughry clan reunion last year, he purchased three copies of the new book, Jeremiah Loughry Family Genealogy Records from Ireland, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Beyond, by Harold Aubrey Jones and James Edward Stephens. The book contains the full list of known descendants of Jeremiah Loughry, who immigrated to the U.S. between 1733 and 1737, and died in Gettysburg, PA in 1749. Although we haven’t yet found any confirmed ties between this line of Loughrys and the descendants of James Loughrey, Sr. who form the core of the LFA, both families have long suspected a common origin. The three books Bob bought now reside with him ([email protected]), LFA member Bruce Samoore ([email protected]), and LFA Communications director Liz Fuller ([email protected]), and any of them would be happy to look up specific names that other LFA members might be curious about.
· Kelli Ann Marks found a "History of Liberty Township" (Iowa) online at http://www.rootsweb.com/~iascott/liberty.htm, which mentions Peter Laughrey (sic) and his brother James.
· Kelli also found mentions of several lines of Laughreys and Laugherys (probably unrelated to the line that descends from James Loughrey, Sr.) at the Wyman family site at http://www.wyman.org
· More Loughreys are mentioned in the online records for St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Cemetery in Lawrenceville, PA, which can be found at http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Acres/7967/stmyp.htm and http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Acres/7967/stmyce.htm First names include Aloyse (1892-1974), Robert J. (1892-1950), Charles R. (1872-1909), Frances (1845-1912) and William (1838-1899). The database also includes a couple of Carrolls, Rileys, and a Nash...but none of the people mentioned, including the Loughreys, appears in our family tree. If anyone has any hints how they might be related...please let us know!
· Mary Hagen reports that the Illinois State Archives now has a website which may be very helpful to the many Loughreys and cousins searching for information about Loughreys in Illinois. The site can be found at http://www.sos.state.il.us/depts/archives/arc_home.htm.
We have lost touch with the following people on the Loughrey mailing list. If anyone knows how to reach any of them, please contact LFA secretary/treasurer Lee Gartner, at [email protected]:
Robert Hagen – Raleigh, NC
Sara Long – Kearney, MO
Dr. Thomas Loughrey
William Loughrey – Bloomfield Township, MI
David Pipes – Omaha, NE
Allen Riley – Midwest City, OK
Nancy Robinson – Phoenix, AZ
Lowell Walker – Vancouver, WA
On March 20, 2000, Debra Sue (Adams) Tubbs gave birth to a baby boy, Matthew Quin Tubbs. Debra is a granddaughter of Birdie Beatrice Laughrey (granddaughter of John Calvin Laughrey) and James Tye.
Kathryn Alice ("Aunt Alice") Tye Brown died on Tuesday, May 24, 2000. An aunt of LFA member Kelli Ann Marks, she was the daughter of Birdie Beatrice Laughrey and Melvin Tye, and was born on May 9, 1930 in El Dorado Springs, MO. She is survived by her husband, Bob Brown, and six children.
Eileen Gladys Brink Chezem died on January 18, 2000. She was born Feb. 16, 1926, to Albert and Gladys Pray Brink, a descendant of Peter Loughrey and Margaret Carrell. Survivors included her husband, Fredrick Chezem, of Hot Springs Village, AR, three daughters, a brother and sister, and four grandchildren.
Gladys Verona ("Verona") Riley Comeau died on March 5, 2000. Verona was a daughter of Thomas Wilson Riley (son of Cyrus Wilson Riley) and Martha Alice Smith, and was an aunt of LFA member Vivian Loughrey Fuller. She is survived by her daughter Helen (Comeau) Sheridan.
Valmer Edwin Emery, father of LFA member Cheryl Emery O’Connor , passed away on Feburary 4, 2000. A great-grandson of Sylvester Carrell and Margaret Elizabeth Loughrey, Val was born on May 15, 1910, in Two Harbors, MN, and worked as a cutter operator at the Consoweld Corporation, near Wisconsin Rapids, for more than 30 years. In addition to Cheryl, survivors include a son, two sisters, nine grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren.
Aaron Tonder, son of Michael Tonder and Jody Freij, died on October 15, 1999. Aaron was born September 4, 1980, and was a great, great, great-grandson of Adam Best, Jr. and Rhoda Elizabeth Loughrey.
"Genealogy: where you confuse the dead and irritate the living. "
-- author unknown
Volume 3, No. 1
Elizabeth Fuller
July 7, 2000
Copyright 2000, Loughrey Family Association of America.
Web design by Leaping Lizard Productions.