Thomas Essman - Thomas Essman born 1934, "son of John and Nancy Essman...

@Erica Howton, that really looks good, clean, no inappropriate people in it. I've got to head for the rack. I'm falling out of my chair. :) If I could reach you, I'd give you a big hug. Goodnight!

11th cousins through Tapp, who I have never heard of.

Let's see if Erica shoots this one down too haha.

https://www.geni.com/path/Hatte-Blejer+is+related+to+William-Essman...

I've been cooking, cleaning and taking care of grandchildren for more than 24 hours. Thank goodness you all were busy.

Hatte Rubenstein Blejer Mahala Boydston needed some work. Her name had “southernified” to Mahala, and the Boydston ancestry is controversial. But the links from son James to the Essmans looks OK & of course her pedigree should be excellent.

11th cousins through Tapp, who I have never heard of.

TAPP - PROBABLY THAT ONE LITTLE CHUNK OF GERMAN YOUR DNA TEST DISCOVERED. WAS PROBABLY VON TRAPP UNTIL HE MIGRATED TO THE U.S. AND CHANGED HIS NAME SO HE COULD RUN A RESORT SOMEWHERE UP IN NEW ENGLAND? :)

Let's see if Erica shoots this one down too haha.

I'M TOO IGNORANT TO EVEN UNDERSTAND THAT'S WHAT SHE DID BUT SHE DOES "TAKE THE BULL BY THE HORNS..." :)

https://www.geni.com/path/Hatte-Blejer+is+related+to+William-Essman...

INTERESTING! I DON'T THINK I'VE EVER SEEN A TREE WITHOUT AT LEAST ONE "DICK" IN IT. THIS TOOL HAS THE POTENTIAL TO BE DANGEROUS. RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THAT LIST OF FOLKS WHO LINK US AS 11TH COUSINS IS A MEHITABLE BOYDSTON, A NAME THAT SHOWED UP IN ONE ESSMAN TREE I FOUND ON ANCESTRY AS THE WIFE OF THOMAS ESSMAN MY 4TH GGFTR. I WONDERED WHAT POT SOMEONE PULLED THAT OUT OF AND NOW I THINK I KNOW. THAT PERSON MUST'VE SEEN HER IN A SERIES OF LINKS SUCH AS THIS ONE AND TRIED TO BACK INTO A GOOD NAME FOR OL' THOMAS TO HOOK UP WITH. I AM ABSOLUTELY AMAZED AT WHAT LENGTHS SOME PEOPLE WILL GO TO HAVE A TREE THEY LIKE.

I've been cooking, cleaning and taking care of grandchildren for more than 24 hours. Thank goodness you all were busy.

BLESS YOU. YOUR EFFORT WILL NO DOUBT BE GREATLY APPRECIATED BY ALL EVEN IF SOME ARE SLUGS AND FORGET TO TELL YOU. MOMS - UNDOUBTEDLY THE BEST PART OF THE WORLD. SPEAKING OF WHICH, I SINCERELY WANT TO THANK YOU FOR HELPING THIS MESS THAT IS "MY TREE" GET STRAIGHTENED OUT. I REGRET THAT IT WAS SO TIME INTENSIVE BUT IT SURE IS PRETTY NOW. THANK YOU, AND ERICA IF SHE'S WATCHING. MY HATS OFF TO YOU BOTH - I DON'T THINK I COULD GRASP OTHER PEOPLES INFORMATION AND WORK OUT THE PROBLEMS AS YOU DO AND I REALLY DON'T SEE HOW ANYONE WOULD "MANAGE" 14,000+ PROFILES. IT BOGGLES MY MIND. MAYBE I'M JUST TOO INEXPERIENCED AT MY TINDER YOUNG AGE TO SEE THE BIG PICTURE. :) NOW THAT ALL THE WORK IS DONE, ENJOY THE FESTIVITIES. I'M CONVINCED YOU WILL. :)

Thank you, this has been fun. Now - fill in those profiles so we know who all your family is.

It's been fun. Now to start a project for the Great Texas Hanging at Gainesville once the Jewish New Year is past.

I'll help after Tuesday night, so if you and Erica have more to do, I can pitch in.

@Erica Howton, fun, FUN? Yikes! LOL I won't be able to fill in anything for a couple of weeks. My keyboard is smokin' and hissing at me.

@Hatte Anne Blejer. You think I'm enjoying this, don't you. My fingers are all knotted up, my ankles are at least double size, and I think I blew out an ovary. Now go party and leave me alone, ya hear!

We may have found the mother lode of “Ozark comedians.” :):):)

@Erica Howton, LOL. How's my profile lookin'?

Typo in death date at Leonard Delbert Plymale I fixed and donated a census report link. We’re testing an annoying consistency check and it was actually useful for once. Otherwise your entries look quite fine.

@Erica Howton, good morning. I was entering siblings of Leonard Delbert Plymale and as you probably know, that adding people screen doesn't always default to the very top so I inadvertently neglected to scroll up and hence listed two of his siblings as his children, and tying to edit that, I found that there's no provisions for changing a relationship short of removing the profile of those two and re-entering them as siblings and I ran into the "you're going to split the tree" warning and I don't recall you telling me that would be alright - in fact I think you told me if I found myself in this position to seek help but then that could be a figment of my imagination also, as much ground as we've covered. I started to go ahead and add them as siblings as well but then I got some ringing in my head about having two profiles that would have to be merged so I backed out and it's just sitting here waiting on some kind of signal. I dozed my way through that error which I won't do again but I cannot understand why there is no provision for making such a correction without destroying Geni. Of course, I didn't program Geni and therefore don't understand all the ramifications involved. What say you?

William: Go to the Edit of the child, select the Relationship tab.
There the "parent" entry is a little pop-down menu; you should be able to select the correct parents (it shows the "nearby relationships"). Then click the Save button at the bottom.

@Dan Cornett, you forgot to tell me to not be doing this stuff straight out of bed with no coffee. I even got Erica's name wrong and I must have typed that 500 times in the last few days. Sorry! I'll try to wake up here and get those two in their proper places and then go do something else 'til I wake up. Thanks.

Aha! I added the parents last and that's why that option wasn't available to me earlier when I tried to do that. So there is order in the world after all. Thanks Dan.

William Eugene Essman, Sr I finally found my Arkansas funny guy.

John Cornelius Ross

Apparently John Cornelius was a friend and informant of S.C. Turnbo, "historian of the Ozarks"

Here’s the “remarkable leap of a panther!” Story:

https://thelibrary.org/lochist/turnbo/v10/st345.html

And not to be outdone by her husband, his wife Eudora Lee "Dora" Ross offered up her “own” panther story:

“Terrible experience with a panther !”

http://thelibrary.org/lochist/turnbo/v12/st373.html

I like the panther stories, I have a few of my own. But none can top the idea that a nine year old little girl was able to scare off a panther that thought she was a snack.

My maternal grandfather was born and raised in Yellville, and his paternal g-grandmother was Sarah (James) Thompson (all original settlers of Marion county Arkansas with some members of the family from parts of southern Missouri).

I noticed that Dora's Geni profile gives her maiden name as Jones (father, William), but that S. C. Turnbo stated she was a James ("Billy"). Interesting. I never was able to find her parents.

Her parents could easily have been my error! I’m going to fix it now. Her brother should be findable? “Mrs. Ross is a sister of Cyrus A. James of near Protem, Mo. ”

Since it’s my entries I’m just going to change names on the profiles.

https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/4:1:273J-KLZ Thinks they know his parents

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/51283066

Maybe this will somehow lead to finding my 3rd g-grandmother's parentage. Thank you, Erica :)

Meanwhile, I need to go ahead and fix up Sarah and Isaac Thompson's profiles, which I've left sadly neglected thus far. My understanding is that Isaac was from N. Carolina and his occupation was "ran a boat from Nashville to New Orleans" (which I assume was a steamboat on the Mississippi). Don't know if he owned the mysterious "boat", was the captain, first mate, navigator, or anything else about it.

Nor have I found their graves yet, and I need to locate my evidence for her name (which is all I have for her), but here is Isaac's son (my gg-grandfather, William Alexander, from Tennessee) and grandson (my g-grandfather James Isaac, b. in Arkansas):

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/41745280/william-alexander-thom...

https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=8Ro7AQAAMAAJ&pg=GBS.PA968

http://www.ozarkhistory.com/thompson.htm

(Effie Thompson was my mother's "Aunt Effie", a Yellville school teacher.)

I'm not asking anyone to stop everything and go find my ancestors for me :D Just thought it might be relevant information to add to the panther story :D And you never know how one thing leads to another when people communicate with one another, especially when we share the same interest, genealogy.

Sarah Thompson (James)

That led to another Texas story. Dora (James) Ross’ cousin was killed by the San Saba mob.

William Alexander James

“William Alexander Thompson was born on June 8th, 1824 in Tennessee to Isaac Thompson and Sarah James. ”

Seeing as this James family did a lot of marrying in Maryville, Blount County, TN, I’d say we’re in the right ball park.

@Erica Howton, thanks for the terrible panther stories. LOL. I enjoyed them, read several. I grew up on stuff like that. My dad's first church where he was pastor after school was in a small town in south-central Arkansas, a little town with 800 people surrounded by poor farm land, during WWII which meant pre-tv radio and the stories that were told on there which were quite interesting at the time.

There were no community services like water, sewer, natural gas, etc., only electricity. It was pretty primitive for the time about 100 years behind the larger towns in Arkansas like Little Rock or Fort Smith, where we had lived prior to dad selling out, quitting his job, and heading for a Baptist college to prepare for the ministry, all made worse by the fact that WWII was going on. We had "a path" out back to the "bathroom," a well with a bucket for drawing water, we heated with wood stoves, chopped the wood, and mom cooked with kerosene. We lived in the Baptist Parsonage which was actually one of the nicer houses in town, had a big black kettle in the back yard for heating bath water, boiling white clothes, and preparing stuff like tomatoes from the garden to can for the root cellar. We had a crank phone that was two numbers, 89 as I recall, and an operator who sat in an office above the bank with her switchboard. At that time, grocery stores were, well.... enough of that.

There was a group men in the church who raised coon hunting dogs, basically beagles, and every Friday night, year around weather permitting, they would go "coon hunting." I got to go along with them when I wanted. They didn't actually hunt. They went out to a favorite spot, built a fire, put on a big can for boiled coffee. They'd turn the dogs loose, twenty or more, and let 'em run the hilly countryside and listen to them bark. From that they knew where the dogs were, how far away, what direction they were going in, etc., and usually what they were chasing.

After several hours, usually around daybreak, when the dogs stopped running but kept barking, the men knew the dogs had "treed" something, where they were, and they'd go get the dogs. In the meantime, the old codgers would sit around the fire for several hours drinking that "rot gut" coffee and telling stories not unlike the Panther stories but mostly about what all the dogs had treed, coon, fox, wildcats, etc., and what their friends had told them that their dogs had treed. I won't say I was excited about it but when you have little else to do but play monopoly, rook, dominoes, etc., with the family, or read which I detested to do then and haven't changed much, it's something to do for a little break. Overall, I have to say I enjoyed it but it didn't "rub off on me." I don't find that I ever have an urge to go by a pack of dogs and head out.

Most of the rest of my early years were spent up in northwest Arkansas where there was running water, inside plumbing, etc., but still no shortage of story tellers around.

Mr. Essman, your familiar memories inspire quite a bit of nostalgia in me, which I enjoy, so thank you for that.

Erica, as always, much appreciated. I'm scheduling some time this evening to work on their profiles. Now that I think about it, I've long suspected Sarah James might be from Blount county, although many Jameses in the Marion Co. Ark. region evidently were born in Missouri (as are some other members of my Ozark family, the Morrows and Kimberlings). So I need to try to clear that up once and for all, if possible.

Anyway, the bit about Wm. Alexander James really blew me away. I was speechless at first, and got an eerie sense of deja vu, like "I've seen this before." But where or how, I don't know. Whether or not it turns out to be relevant to my family genealogy, it's extremely interesting, historically. And it isn't lost on me that this unfortunate young man bore the same appellation as Sarah James' son, Wm. A. Thompson.

Such circumstances as surrounded his death would likely be in perfect keeping with the character of most if not all of my family, who would have been far more likely to be killed by such a mob than to become one of them. But I'm sure there's more to the story, and now I'm itching to uncover it, if possible.

Thanks again, ya'll.