Old Phenice Memorabilia

I can’t remember when I first saw this old letter and old copy of a photograph. I seem to recall seeing a Xerox copy of the photograph in my mom’s collection of Phenice family history many years ago. I’ve already shared a copy of the letter that my great great great grandmother Susan Jackson Phenice (wife of Daniel Phenice) wrote to her daughter-in-law Ida Fitzgerald Phenice (wife of Daniel Abraham Phenice). The letter I’m sharing this time was written much more recently. The older one was written in 1877 and the more recent one was written in 1975. Here is the first page of that 1975 letter.

The letter was written by Meredith Compton Gibson (1924-2002) to Gerald Z. Phenice (1909-2001). Their correspondence started in 1973 when Meredith found Gerald’s name in a Columbus, Ohio, phone book. Since his last name was the same as her grandmother’s maiden name (Maud Phenice Martin – the daughter of Ida and Abraham Phenice mentioned earlier), she wrote to him to find out what their connection was.

As it turned out, Gerald and Meredith’s father Harry Dale Compton were second cousins. They were both great grandsons of Daniel and Susan Jackson Phenice. So they corresponded for a while. I found this one really interesting because it identifies all of the family lines that Meredith, Gerald, and our family group descend from.

Meredith comes from the Daniel Abraham (1852-1900) line. His daughter Maud was the mother of Harry Dale Compton. Harry was the father of Meredith. A sad part of this story is that Maud had a sister named Gertrude that died as a teenager around 1900. This tragedy struck Abraham particularly hard and he ended up committing suicide shortly after her death.

Gerald comes from the William Henry (1840-1914) line. William Henry was the oldest son of Daniel and Susan Jackson. He had a son named Milroy Morton Phenice. Milroy was the father of Gerald. Gerald was actually the youngest of four children.

My family line comes from Samuel Charles Phenice (1844-1939). Samuel had the longest lifespan of all of his siblings. He lived to be 95 years old. Not bad for a Civil War soldier who was injured in battle. He was the father of my great grandfather Harry C. Phenice. HC was the father of Myrtle Phenice Bucklin. Myrtle was the mother of my mom Betty Lou Bucklin Landry.

The other great thing about the letter is that it included the photo of Samuel and his family that I mentioned at the beginning of this post. For the longest time, I read that second line as “1st wife Catherine Jane Foster Phenice” and wondered if there was a 2nd wife that I hadn’t found. I recently realize it says ” lso wife C.J.F.P.” The A is missing in ‘Also’ because of a typo with the old typewriter she was using to type that letter! Long before SpellCheck!

As you can see, it is a poor quality image. It looks like a Xerox of a Xerox. She obviously had a better quality photo that she sent, because she encourages Gerald to look at the photo with a magnifying glass. A magnifying glass won’t help now. You might get a better view of those large Phenice ears that she talks about in the letter! If you look closely at the names, you can see that she wrote one of the daughter’s names as Myrtle and then tried to remove it all and replace it with May. I think she had it right the first time. I think this is Samuel and Catherine with their daughters Emma and Myrtle with some of their grandchildren. It’s hard to tell with the blurriness of the photo, but the man in the right of the photo could be their son Edd.

The other subject that Meredith talks about is an old tintype photo that her grandmother had sent her previously. She spoke about it in another letter as well, saying that it was taken in the 1850s. Her grandmother said it was Meredith’s 3rd great uncle William Henry. Daniel’s son by the same name was born in1840 and would have been too young in 1850s for this individual. So this would be Daniel’s brother. Since I don’t have a photo of my great great great grandfather (yet!), this is the closest thing that I have. She also said that Samuel had whiskers like this at one point. I’d like to see that, too!

I’m always on the lookout for more photos – either improved quality or ones I haven’t seen before. I have been looking for the photo of Samuel and his family for a few years. I’ve gotten others that I didn’t know about along the way. (Thanks to those Quillen girls and other cousins!) Since the letter was from Meredith Gibson, I thought of tracking down her descendants. I think the old letter from Susan Phenice was in her possession, too. I’d really like to get better quality scans of both.

So you can imagine my excitement when one of Meredith’s children showed up as a DNA match to me a few months ago! I don’t want to come across as all “Grab, grab, grab” when I introduce myself, so I try to be subtle. But I also don’t want any old family photos or letters destroyed either. I have to check on these things. So I sent off a message of inquiry and sat back and waited patiently.

I didn’t have to wait long. And I was so excited when I first started reading the response. “My mother was an avid genealogist.” Yes, I knew that. It went on about “totes chocked full of family history…” Yee Haw! I was really getting excited and it continued with “…letters and photos…often dozens of photos…with careful notes on the back…” You can only imagine my excitement. And then…

“I have not even popped the lid of the Phenice tote… My daughter is keeper of the totes…” Where is he going with this? “I will happily look into the Phenice material, but unfortunately…” No! No unfortunately! Not now! They were seeming so close! “the totes are buried deep in storage…daughter building a home…inaccessible for 12 months or so…” A year!? or so!? Say it isn’t so!!!

So I sent back a letter of feigned understanding.

And I sat back.

And I wait…