Cassie & Viola McCarley

 Several years ago I posted a picture of Cassie & Viola McCarley that was sent to me by distant cousins, Rob & Trinity.   This  is the picture they sent to me and an AI version of the picture. 

   

Cassie and Viola were daughters of Sidney and Mattie Niblett McCarley.  Cassie was born January 20, 1899 in Indian Territory. She died of Scarlet Fever on 11 February 1902. For such a short life, Cassie had her own stories to tell.  Below are links to some of those stories. 

Essie Viola was born on 28 June of 1901 in Indian Territory.  

More posts about Cassie E. McCarley

https://lelasgenealogy.blogspot.com/2020/11/good-deeds-of-many-researchers.html 

https://lelasgenealogy.blogspot.com/2011/11/serendipity.html 

Marlow Cemetery

 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks
Week 20, May 14 – 20, 2026
#52ancestors
Prompt: At the Cemetery

 If my Mother’s family had a family cemetery, it would have to be the Marlow Cemetery in Marlow, Oklahoma.  My Mom’s family has lived in that area since it was Indian Territory. I remember even as a child visiting the cemetery, not often as we lived in Texas. We didn’t go on most visits back to Oklahoma or at least, I didn’t. Now I wonder if some of the times that I was playing with cousins and my parents left, if they had gone to visit the cemetery. There are 17 of my relatives buried in Marlow Cemetery, however it a very large cemetery with over 10,000 graves.  It is still an active cemetery, so I can imagine there are other families who might consider it their family cemetery.

 My Mother’s family:

 Grandparents, Thomas Osa McCarl (904-1975) and Gladys Mamie Sample McCarley (1914-1995)

 Great Grandparents, Sidney E. (1873-1958) & Mattie Niblett (1871- 1968) McCarley.

 Grandaunt & uncle, Carl Henry (1906-1981) and Opal Mary Collier (1814-1991) McCarley.

 Grandaunt & uncle, Sidney Floyd (1909- 1996) & Dorothy B. Forth 1911-2003) McCarley.

 Granduncle, Wilbern Newton McCarley (1911-1990)

 Great Grandaunt & uncle, Walter Leslie (1881-1961) & Anne Robinson (1891-1962) McCarley.

 1^st cousin, 2x removed, Earnest Edwin (1911-1985) & Ollie Marie Smith (1912-2009) McCarley.

 Great Grandaunt & uncle, Tilmon Andrew & Tressie Evelyn Fowler Niblett

 My Father’s family:

 Aunt & Uncle, Don & Opal Golightley Sorrels. 

A question unanswered

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks
Week 19, May 7 – 13, 2026
#52ancestors
Prompt: A question the records can’t answer 

Sidney E McCarley was born to Mitchel W. and Nancy R. McDuffie McCarley on December 29, 1873.  Despite an extensive search of every record found on Sidney, no record reveals what middle name the E represents. Not even his children knew what the E stood for as he refused to answer any questions about it. 

Almost every record searched listed him as Sidney E. McCarley. There are a few records that don’t list him as Sidney E or Sid.  One is the 1900 Chickasaw Nation, Indian Territory Census when he was 26 years old. It very clearly says, Sidney J McCarley.  The other record is his WWI draft registration. He signed it, Sidney Johnston McCarley.  The 1900 Indian Territory census (different from the Chickasaw Nation Census) lists him as Sidney J. McCarley. Maybe he was experimenting with a new middle name in 1900 or was his name Sidney E Johnston McCarley?  Johnston sounds like a surname, but none of his ancestors carried that name, so where did it come from? 

There has been some speculation that the E stands for Ezekiel because his great grandfather’s name was Ezekiel. His father didn’t know his grandfather, so would his father have named Sidney after a man that died before he was born? The E was there when he was a child and carried throughout his life.  His son, Carl, listed his father as Sidney E (only) McCarley on his WWII draft registration card. When Sidney refused to tell his children what the E stood for, he didn’t say he only had an initial for his middle name.   Two of his other boys, Floyd and Wilbern listed his name on their draft registrations as Sidney E. McCarley. 

The records haven’t revealed his name yet, and they may never reveal the answer. This is one time I would really like to talk to his parents because I know he wouldn't tell me. 

Christmas Eve Gift

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks
Week 18, April 30 - May 6, 2026
#52ancestors
Prompt: Tradition 

Christmas Eve morning the phone rings. My mother answers the phone but instead of Hello, she says “Christmas Eve Gift”. Then seconds later she starts laughing. She got one over on her sister.  After talking to her for a little while, she hangs up and calls her other sister.  But her sister knows that trick, too.  She starts laughing again before she wishes her sister Merry Christmas.  The phone rings again and it is her brother.  Christmas Eve morning was a time that my Mother always talked to her brother and 3 sisters. It didn’t matter that long distance was expensive back then. What mattered was counting coup on her siblings. 

The McCarley siblings with their Mother
Jean, Gwonda, Ted, Vadie, Sadie
Mother, Gladys Sample McCarley 
Thank you, Kerry McCarley Balthrop for the photo 

“Christmas Eve Gift” was a game they played as children that their parents had taught them.  The first person to say “Christmas Eve Gift” was to receive a gift from the person they beat to it. I don’t know if they really gave gifts as kids. I don’t think they did as adults. It was really all about being the first to say it.  My siblings and I don’t do it very often but some years I call them to say, “Christmas Eve Gift”.  

I had never heard of anyone else playing this game, so I thought it was just one of the strange things my family does. One day I decided to do a little research on it. One website said it started in Scotland. That made sense to me since my mother’s maiden name was McCarley with other Scots-Irish names sprinkled into her background.   In anticipation of this post, I decided to look up that information again but couldn’t find it. However, I had an interesting conversation with an artificial intelligence (AI). 

There doesn’t appear to be any documentation that this game was ever played in Scotland. In fact, Christmas was barely celebrated in Scotland for centuries after the reformation. Their main winter holiday & gift giving was at Hogmanay (New Year Eve).  One of the first documented mentions of the “Christmas Gift” game was in a letter from Thomas Jefferson in 1809. He wrote to John Wayles Eppes that his nephew and his cousins were running about “bawling out 'a merry christmas' 'a christmas gift' “  The game with “Christmas Gift” came before “Christmas Eve Gift”.  

It’s first mentioned in Virginia, then documented in the Appalachia area of TN, SW Virginia, and Western NC. The tradition follows the same migration route that many of the Scots-Irish traveled going south and then west.  From SC, many went to Tennessee  or Alabama, then Mississippi and East Texas. Perhaps that is why my first research thought it came from Scotland. 

The mentions of “Christmas Eve Gift” came later but has been documented in Kentucky and Tennessee families as well as in Texas especially with families with ties to the Appalachia. The Scots-Irish were strongly represented in the Appalachia area. The core of Appalachia is considered Western Virginia, Eastern Tennessee & Kentucky, Western North Carolina, and all of West Virginia. 

The McCarleys were in Spartanburg, SC in the 1700s, then moved through Kentucky, Tennessee, and Texas before settling in Indian Territory in the early 1900s.  Spartanburg, SC is in the edge of the Appalachia with a heavy Scots-Irish settlement. 

The McCarleys were in Tennessee and that may be where they started playing the “Christmas Eve Gift” game.  Maury County, TN is outside of the Appalachia, but it was heavily settled by people from the Appalachia core. By the time the McCarleys were in Tennessee, the “Christmas Gift” game had a variation, “Christmas Eve Gift”. If not in Maury County, it may have been while they lived in Marshall County, MS which was within the extended area of Appalachia and was heavily settled by Tennessee migrants.

It kind of makes me sad that “Christmas Eve Gift” is dying out in our family. 

 

Sources: 

Cassidy, F. G., & Hall, J. H. (Eds.). (1985–2013). Dictionary of American Regional English. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 

Christmas gift (exclamation). (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved April 29, 2026, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_gift_(exclamation) 

Heckert, A. (2016, December 23). “Christmas gift!” The roots of a Southern holiday saying. Garden & Gun. Retrieved April 29, 2026, from https://gardenandgun.com/christmas-gift-the-roots-of-a-southern-holiday-saying/ 

Jefferson, T. (1809, December 25). Letter to John Wayles Eppes. In The Papers of Thomas Jefferson.  https://www.monticello.org/encyclopedia/christmas 

Thomas, J. (1942). Blue Ridge Country. New York, NY: Holt. 

Wilson, T. (n.d.). Christmas gift. Blind Pig and The Acorn. Retrieved April 29, 2026, from https://blindpigandtheacorn.com/christmas-gift/

 

 

 

Who was Clara Alice McDonnell's parents?

Clarissa (Clara) Alice McDonald 

 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: 
Week 13, Apr 2 – Apr 8, 2026
#52ancestors
Prompt: A Brick Wall Revisited

One of my brick wall was my great great grandmother, Clara Alice (Clarissa) McDonnell. She was the
only 2x great grandparent whose parents I did not know.  I knew her maiden name from from her marriage certificate.  However, doing research in Tazwell County, Illinois where she married, gave no results.  So, I moved onto other research until I learned about the Full Text Search on familysearch.org.  Full Text Search is powered by artificial intelligence.  It can search the almost 2 billion records on familysearch that are not indexed or transcribed.  It can also transcribe the records and summarize them for you. 

I started by entering “Clara McDonnell”  into the name box with quotation marks. Then using the filters on the left after searching, I narrowed the search down to Tazewell County, Illinois.  The only records that came up pertained to her marriage.  Before I had their marriage as an indexed record, but this included a copy of the handwritten index in the filed Tazewell County marriage books. While it was not new information to me, it was a primary document. 

Next I searched for her husband’s name, Jonathan Wilcox. There were too many results so I narrowed it down by adding the quotation marks around his name and narrowing it to Tazewell County, IL.   The first record listed was an 1876 warranty deed for property that Clara A and Jonathan Wilcox were selling.  The warranty deed said Clara was conveying the property “in her own right”.  I didn’t know the property laws in Illinois so I checked with chatgpt (AI) to find out what it meant for her to convey property in her own right.  In 1861, Illinois had passed a Married Women’s Property Act which entitled married women to own property. How did Clara (McDonnell) Wilcox come to own property in her own name? My first thought was that she inherited it. Women rarely worked at a paying job at that time which would give her money to buy land. So, the probability was that she inherited land or money which she used to buy it. 

The next search should be estate records, however I had already searched for maiden name in the records. So, I searched for her married name, “Clara Wilcox” in Tazewell County.  Among the few results was a petition to sell property to satisfy debts. Clara was listed as a defendant. The plaintiff was Moleston Fisher, administrator of the estate of William G. McDonald. None of the documents pertaining to this land mentioned the relationship between William G McDonald and the named defendants.  The other defendants mentioned in order were Catherine McDonald, James McDonald, Margaret Kinsey, Milton Kinsey, Jane Knox, A.B.C. Knox, Clara Wilcox, J.M. Wilcox, Nancy McDonald, Isora McDonald, Maggie McDonald, and Hattie McDonald.  My hypothesis was that William G was her father and Catherine, for various reasons was her mother.

I expected to find William G McDonald on the 1870 census easily since this document stated he died on the 30th of December in 1874. I did not find anyone in either the 1870 or 1860 census that stood out as William G in Illinois or Ohio.  From later census records, I knew that Clara was born in Ohio. I did find him in the 1850 census in Urbana, Champagne, Ohio. 

Wm G was 21 years old living with Alexander (52) and Catherine (44) McDonald. Also in the household was Jane (18), Margaret (14), James (11), and Clarissa (8). We can assume from this that Alexander is his father, Catherine is probably his mother. Jane, Margaret, James, and Clarissa are his siblings. In the estate petition, Margaret would be Margaret Kinsey, Jane would be Jane Knox, and Clarissa would be Clara Wilcox.  Clarissa’s age fits with what I already knew. Alexander was not mentioned in the petition so I will be searching for a death record for  him before 1874. I tracked Alexander in census records from 1820 to 1870. In the 1870 census, the family is indexed as McDonnell. In looking at the record it looks more like the final D was not closed making it look like McDonalil. Perhaps it was a Scottish drawl that made it sound like an L to the census taker which may have happened in Clara's marriage record. 

With this information, I am confident that the Clara A McDonnell who married Jonathan Wilcox was really Clarissa (Clara) McDonald, daughter of Alexander and Catherine McDonald. 

A Family Naming Pattern

 

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks:
Week 13, Mar 26 – Apr 1, 2026
#52ancestors
Prompt: A Family Pattern 

Family naming patterns are fairly common. The Golightleys have a naming pattern, too.  John, Robert, John, Robert, John….. 

Thomas Golightly, born in August 1742, started the trend when he named one of his sons John.  Like his father, John was born in wCounty Durham, England. John’s son, Robert was also born in County Durham, England. Robert, born in 1806, named one of his sons, Robert and another one, John.  I am descended from John, born in 1844, so the pattern continued.  

John, born 1844, immigrated to America where he named one of his sons, Robert.  Technically, he also named him John, because his son’s name was Robert Johnston Golightley.  However, Johnston was his wife’s maiden name. Robert named his son, Albert John, but he was always called Johnnie. Are you still with me? 

Johnnie, born in 1906, broke with tradition for good reason. His two sons were named Leland Johnston Golightley & Earl Windell Golightley.  Earl named one of his 4 boys, John.  Leland named one of his 3 boys, Bobby, not Robert, but often a nickname for Robert. 

We will see who the next generation brings.

An Address with a Story

 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks:
Week 12, Mar 19–25, 2026
#52ancestors
Prompt: An Address with a Story
A story about my grandchildren’s ancestors 

 

2024

A couple of years ago my brother, Bryan, sent our siblings group chat a picture of a house and asked if we recognized it. It had these huge trees covering half of the front and a ramp covered the concrete steps up to the porch.After realizing it was in Norton, Kansas, we knew it was the house we lived in when I was in the 2^nd grade and my younger brother and sister were in the 1^st grade. 

  

2026

 When we zoomed into the picture we could see the railing around the porch.  The railing isn’t what I remember but it kept us from falling off the high porch. I thought the railing was made of decorative concrete blocks that you could see through instead of the wooden slats. It doesn’t look as tall in the picture as I remember. The stairs were wider and had a railing on each side. Of course, I was only 7 years old, so it probably just seemed bigger to me.  There was also a door on the right side of the house with a much smaller porch. When you went through that door, you could go into the kitchen or down to the basement.    

This is the house where we chased fireflies and put them in a jar so we could read after our parents went to bed.  Well, that never really worked and we let them out the next morning.  But we would try again the next night. It was where my brother in the first grade would walk down the alley to an elderly neighbor’s house and talk to him in his garage for hours. We played in the back yard where there was a root cellar with a slanted door that we could slide down.  The side yard was mostly dirt so we could make roads, bridges and cardboard houses for cars and trucks.  When it rained, we played on the huge front porch. Barbara and Kathy played with baby dolls while Bobby and I crouched behind the railing protecting them from the Indians. We walked almost a mile to school every day, in rain, snow, or pretty weather. Daddy was at work before we left for school. Mom didn’t have a car and even if she did, she had Kathy and the twin infants to worry about.  She told me as an adult that she worried every time we left for school and when she knew we were on the way home, especially in bad weather.  For us it was just part of our day and often the most fun. You never knew what interesting rocks or animals you might see. This is where I watched a violent storm break an upstairs window while my mother was trying to put a quilt over it. This was the only time that we lived close to our paternal grandparents and saw them on the weekends. I remember my grandmother teaching me to crochet around wire coat hangers. I still have one of them, but I don’t remember how to crochet. This is the house where we lived when Brent and Bryan were born.

The house was built in 1890 with two stories and a basement. It was a huge house with a huge front porch, although it looks like it shrunk in the last 60 years. We were not allowed to go in the basement because we were renting the house and the owners had stored some of their things in the basement. It was really fascinating to see so much stuff though.  The house had two front doors which I had never seen before. One of the doors opened into a parlor where we were not allowed to play, while the other opened into the living room. There were 3 bedrooms upstairs and our parent’s bedroom downstairs which they shared with babies. All the rooms were small though I didn’t realize how small at the time. The house was only 1,304 square feet which seems small now for a family of eight, but it didn’t seem small then.  I always thought it was a huge house. As a 2^nd grader, I believed it was special, and it probably has more stories than I can tell.