This story is recounted by Gene Strachan, who was the son of my paternal grandfather’s brother, born when his sibs were adult. By then the family had emigrated from Scotland to homestead in South Dakota. When Gene wrote out this story, he had been diagnosed with stomach cancer but told no one, simply handwrote a two-volume “Kinko book” and sent copies to family members, people he thought would keep them and use them. He came to visit me — insisted on it though I protested — to go through my father’s early photos of the family, which was fine. I did not know he was dying. I do not know where to send these books before I myself pass on.
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THE GILLIS STORY
John Brown Gillis was a ship builder on St. Simons Island. His wife (I do not know her first name) died in about 1825 and is buried on the Island, I believe. Gillis decided to take the seven children to Scotland via New York. He was a rich man and carried on his person $2460 for expenses. Gillis died in New York. The seven children, accompanied by a Black servant, set sail for Scotland. The youngest child, a baby, died at sea and was buried at sea. The remaining six children were taken in by relatives upon arrival in Scotland.
The $2460 is an interesting story. When Gillis arrived in New York, he put his money in a bank where it would be safe. Gillis had a partner in the shipyard business, a man by the name of Gibson, who made efforts (according to Matt Robertson) to draw the money. He did not succeed. The Gillis children were suspicious of Gibson and refused to give Gibson authority to withdraw the money. From this point is not clear what happened, but the money lay in the bank for 70 years. Imagine, a small fortune in 1825 terms was lost.
Apparently nothing was done to dispose of the money until about 1896 when Matt Robertson’s mother, Ellen Welch Robertson, and his sister, Jeannie Robertson Abbott, found the money with the help of a banker. $2460 was in a bank in Albany, NY. By this time there were 72 claimants but few close heirs. The money was drawn and divided four ways.
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The rumor in my own birth family was that ancestors had once owned a fine oil painting, a string of pearls, and a small fortune. Evidently this was the money, but no one has located the pearls or painting.
The other family story that would make a fine novel about generations is that of the five Welch sisters. Ellen Welch Robertson was one of them. My great-grandfather Archibald Strachan married another one. I blogged about this on January 3, 2007: “The Best Gift: a New Cousin.” Jeannie Robertson Abbott married into a “religious” family in Oklahoma. Otherwise, these were people of the middle class who depended on propriety and national identity to justify them. Katharine Rouzie is the new cousin in question. She doesn’t write but otherwise is quite like me. Her great grandmother, another of the five sisters, married well and thrived in Vancouver, B.C. long enough for Katharine to know her.
At one point I thought I would write these family history books but now it seems as though time is short and no one would be that interested. I prefer to keep developing my discussion of numinous experience, the moment of holiness some people describe. Since I have no agent, no publisher, no editor, no need to make money, I think I should use my freedom to some advantage and this seems worth doing. It's not "religious" in the institutional sense, more of a phenomenon.
Maybe there’s no point to recounting these family stories except to note how much has already been survived for us to exist as a chain of being this long. I do come back and back to that Black servant taking seven children to their relatives in Scotland and losing the infant at sea. What happened to her when she got them to their destination? Did they keep her on, include her in the family? Or did she want to go home? Did she wear out in the effort and die relatively young?
Gene included a lot of information about St. Simons Island. It’s near Georgia, very lush and exploitable. Eugenia Price wrote historical novels about the place: Lighthouse, New Moon Rising, Beloved Invader. I suppose I ought to buy them and read them. Mountains of books rise around me. Google shows these books are still popular.
The Wesley brothers were on the island before they founded the Methodist denomination, assuming that they were simply reforming the Anglican church which saw itself as a reformation of the Catholic church. The name of the island, St. Simons, is the only legacy of Euro missionaries trying to convert the Guale Indians. I do not know what those original people called themselves except as so many did, simply “The People.” Much later the Strachans as I knew them had no awareness of indigenous people, except that my father would speak about “papooses” with inappropriate fondness.
“The Gillises are descendants of Scottish Highlanders. The surname, Gillis, is derived from two Gaelic words, which mean servant of Jesus.” “The Gillis family was a sept of the Clan MacPherson.” Gillis could also be a Christian name and anglicized as “Elias.” There is a tartan, in fact, two — one ancient and one modern. Gene photocopied all this from a document about early Georgia families. The entry includes an account of the Clearances, which was when the Scots treated their own people the same way as they later treated the American indigenous people, replacing them with sheep. My father’s family was very proud of their Scots past but never mentioned the Clearances.
A later bit of history was that an aunt by marriage had a mother who had been included in an historic child-sweep of London that gathered orphans and sent them to Canada, whether or not they wanted to go. The people who had explored this history warned that the descendants were often ashamed and hostile, though they could hardly be blamed for surviving. This turned out to be true. Everyone watched “The Outlander” and identified with it, the same way today’s indigenous tribes treat their histories as brave defiance.
Gene thought he was giving me and my cohort a true account of our ancestors. I’m not sure anyone cared. As far as I know, I’m the only one who read these “books”. It seems to me so explanatory.
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