Going Down the Rabbit Hole

{Prompt: How far back can you trace your ancestry?}

Doing genealogy is like going down a rabbit hole. Every ancestor that you find has two parents to be discovered. With every generation of the family tree, the amount of historical research doubles.

This is the story of how I became acquainted with genealogy, and how far down the ancestral rabbit hole I have descended….

The Family Tree

As a child I was aware that my parents came from different worlds. That was my first inkling that there was something interesting about the family tree. My mother was a “genteel” Southerner from Columbia, South Carolina, whose parents also spoke with other Southern accents (Virginian and Georgian, I know now). They summered at the family farm in the Shenandoah Valley to grow vegetables, craft furniture, work crossword puzzles, and read. They were Southern gentlefolk.

My father was a “disreputable” Yankee carpetbagger. …No, not really; but he came from upstate New York, from a place called Albany, which was cold and gray and dreary all the time (or at least on the one visit that we made when I was very young). His mother worked for the State of New York, she smoked, she collected stamps, and she either made or purchased a Christmas wreath made out of computer punch cards, way back in the sixties. Her husband — my grandfather — died in 1953, when my father was only 18, and, of course, since I wasn’t even born yet, I never met or knew much about him, except his name — Leonard.

Workers at desks festooned with punch-card wreaths

Let me tell you a little bit more about my parents — the first branches of my family tree. They met in North Carolina in the 1950s. My mother was teaching possibly her first lessons at an elementary school in Wilmington, after graduating from High Point College. My father was a Corporal at the time, serving in the Second Marine Division at Camp Lejeune. That is where he was stationed after completing basic training at Parris Island (in Beaufort, South Carolina). And that is where he went after he dropped out of college in upstate New York. He became a qualified electrician during his training, but he was, first and foremost, a Marine. Semper Fi!

Mom and Dad met at a dance arranged by the USO in Wilmington, and I guess it wasn’t long before they were “going steady”. They were married on August 1st, 1959, and then they moved to Raleigh, North Carolina, in “The Triangle”, where my brother, Mike, was born in 1961, and I was born in 1964.

An exciting depiction of “The Research Triangle”

I’m not sure how long Raleigh has been called a part of “The Triangle” in North Carolina, but it looks like at the time IBM opened in May of 1965, it was part of the “Research Triangle Park”. Possibly that’s when the moniker began. I just knew, at the time, when I was growing up, that I lived in “the Triangle”, a safe zone (or at least a zone of tolerance) for relocating Northerners, delineated by an obtuse triangle (geometrically speaking), that ran between Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill.

It was an island of growth — of government, university, and white collar jobs — in the middle of a sea of traditional trades, like farming (tobacco & pork bellies) and manufacturing (furniture & textiles). It was a place for the mingling of classes - the working class and the intelligentsia; for the clash of politics - Democratic and Republican; and for the alchemy of relationships between people from the North and the South.

I was a bit of a chimera — a child of a Northerner and a Southerner, who had both moved to the area. I realize now, many years later that hardly anyone is really from Raleigh. Most people now, and for many years back, have moved to Raleigh from other places, for various reasons. And most of the people actually born in Raleigh are born — like me — to people from somewhere else. Many are born to Northerners who have moved south for jobs, or for the warm winters, or for the low cost of living.

Before 3rd grade, I didn’t know anything about genealogy, or about a family tree. I just knew that my parents were from two completely different places.

My Famous Cousin

Around about 3rd grade, my class assignment was to bring in a family tree — basically a tree that included my parents and grandparents. But being the quintessential teacher’s pet, I went home and with the assistance of my parents, I carefully drew out and labeled a two-page (fold-out) schematic of my family tree, which went back about nine generations on my mother’s side. Most of it was copied, ancestor by ancestor, from a tree that had been meticulously researched and compiled by a great aunt or a distant cousin in the family of my grandmother, whose name was Mary Cook Atkinson Whitesell. Even so, my third grade teacher seemed really impressed. I guess she was used to getting a lot of drawings that looked more like oak trees, with two or three generations at best.

Although my tree, at that time, included all my grandparents, and nearly all of my (first) great-grandparents, it was really the branch of my maternal grandmother, Mary, that was the star of the show. Her branch included names like Lucy Yates, Malinda Gamble, William Francis Cook, and John Pepper Atkinson. She had relatives that were colonists and some that lived on the American frontier.

One branch — the Yates line — went back to Colonel William Randolph and Mary Isham, who married in 1680, and had nine children. They’re sometimes called the “Adam and Eve of Virginia” because of the great number of their descendants. They also happen to be the great grandparents of founding father Thomas Jefferson, our third US president— making me his second cousin, six times removed.

My cousin— Thomas Jefferson

Another branch of Mary’s tree — the Ellis line — went back to colonial New Hampshire and Massachusetts. It include people like Ebenezer Day, who helped found the frontier town of Keene, New Hampshire, way back in 1753, when even New Hampshire was on the frontier of civilization.

Around the same time (1769), another ancestor in this line, the missionary, Reverend Eleazar Wheelock, was founding a school for the “savages” to school them in Christian theology. That school was the Ivy League institution called Dartmouth College.

My grandmother Mary’s family tree was filled with Colonists and prominent citizens, and there were dramatic emigrations, as ancestors moved to frontier lands in Georgia when the Native Americans were forced out. Some ancestors moved from coastal Virginia to Newnan, Georgia (where my grandmother was born), and some moved from Keene, New Hampshire to Eatonton, Georgia (the birthplace of Joel Chandler Harris of Brer Rabbit fame). The peopling of western Georgia, though it occurred before the Civil War, was a little bit like a land grab in historical terms. Parcels of land were given out by lottery, and it helped to have connections, if you wanted a lottery ticket.

My Mercenary Origins

In comparison, the peopling of the Shenandoah Valley was rather gradual and deliberate, as I discovered from a careful look at my grandfather Willard Alexander Whitesell’s family tree.

Many years after that first copy of my family tree, I started exploring it further. My (maternal) grandfather Willard died in 1991, and not long after that I saw typewritten records of the Whitesell family history. Rather than a bifurcating tree of names and dates (birth and death), this family history was more of a collection of stories. There were a couple of pages on each generation — the Whitesells (or Weitzels), the Huffmans, the Brubakers, and the Rosenbergers.

This little typewritten book, with its strike throughs and corrections, contained intimations that the clan arose from a Hessian (German) mercenary, Johann Paul Weitzel, who arrived near Philadelphia to fight for the English in the Revolutionary War. But subsequently he stayed in America, living in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Over succeeding generations, family members moved from western Pennsylvania to Frederick, Maryland; and then to Rockingham County in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Willard Whitesell’s ancestors — all of them — had been born and living in the valley for a hundred years before he himself was born in 1897.

Glamorous depiction of a Hessian mercenary.

It turns out that Willard also had a diagram of his family tree, which I discovered later. He drew out a diagram, using graphite pencil, on what was once manila-colored packaging paper. The paper was carefully rolled into a cardboard tube that was about three feet long. When fully unrolled, the entire diagram is about the size of a closet door, and barely fits on top of our pool table. The paper is so dark with age, that it is hard to make out the pencil marks today, but when you look closely you can see the names and dates written with the precision of a lifelong chemistry professor (which is what my grandfather did for a living).

The Gallup Name

In contrast, until I retired in 2019, I had no idea how far back my father’s family tree would go. His mother’s family — the Knapps and Shaeffers — came from relatively recent immigrations from Germany. They were immigrants who moved to upstate New York in the 1850s, when there was widespread famine, not only in parts of Germany, but also (famously) in Ireland and other parts of Europe. They were poor and they were farmers or laborers, or they were the children of farmers and laborers.

The Gallup line — my paternal line — was still a mystery. My father’s father, Leonard Byron Gallup, was a mid-level manager for GE and the only son of Ira James Gallup. Ira was one of the many humble farmers and laborers in upstate New York. And that’s as far as the Gallup family tree could be traced, to the best of my knowledge.

I had hopes that the Gallup family came from good stock — perhaps Dutch fur traders who moved up the Hudson valley and settled in Albany. Or possibly Quakers from Pennsylvania had wandered past the Catskills into Finger Lakes of New York.

I knew there was a famous fellow named George Gallup, who created the Gallup Poll — a widely cited and well-regarded statistical poll that achieved recognition for a couple of days every four years during an election cycle.

And I knew there was a town called Gallup — spelled with a “U” — way out west in a state called New Mexico, somewhere in the high desert of the Colorado plateau, on the famous Route 66.

So, I thought, maybe the Gallup family has been around for a while — long enough to have had family that settled the west, and to have other family that made something of themselves. But I didn’t really know.

Vintage postcard of Gallup, New Mexico

So after I retired, I found myself with some free time in the winter — after all the holiday festivities — and I started to build a real family tree, one that included primary historical documents, like census records and vital records; and I created the tree on the Ancestry website, where I could easily put in everything I knew so far and everything that I could discover in the online documents.

Still, when I got to Ira J. Gallup, my paternal great-grandfather, I ran into trouble. I had no birth or death certificates for Ira J. Gallup and no clue as to who his parents were from the (non-existent) family records. (Remember, both Leonard Gallup (his son and my grandfather) and Gerald Gallup (my father) died in their 40s, thus leaving no records of the past for their posterity).

Sidebar: This part is complicated. I wouldn’t blame you if you skipped ahead five or six paragraphs to the next section.

I began to search for the parents of Ira Gallup, and his father, in particular. From Census records, I could determine that Ira lived with his mother, Ann Gallup; grandmother, Catherine Stiner; and siblings Clinton and Ida (his twin) in Berne, New York, in 1875 and in 1870. No father was found listed in the household.

Going back in time, I found that 29 year old Ann (or Anna Stiner) Gallup was living with her children, Byron (age 8), Clinton (age 6), Ira and Ida (age 1) in Berne, at the time of the 1865 New York census, near the end of the civil war. In 1860, before the war began (and before Ira or Ida were born), she was living with Byron (age 3), Clinton (age 1), and her mother Catherine Stiner. Again, no husband was listed in either the 1865 or the 1860 census.

An example of census records

It’s only in a single census — the 1855 New York census — before any of her children were born, that Anna Gallup is listed with her husband — as the spouse of Glen Gallup — both living at that time with her mother, Catherine Stiner, and his brother, James Gallup. In the U.S. census of 1850, Anna Stiner (age 15) is found living with her mother, Catherine Stiner, and her grandmother, Helena Schumaker. Without the 1855 New York census record, I would have no clue as to the ancestral lineage of the Gallup family before Ira Gallup.

Even with the evidence that Glen Gallup and Anna Stiner were my 2nd great-grandparents, the trail of ancestors before Glen Gallup was threadbare. There were no probate records including a man named Glen Gallup. No grave or burial records. No wedding or death certificates. Very little to go on. Fortunately a young man named Glen Gallup showed up in one other census record in 1850, in the nearby town of Knox, New York. He is 16 at that time, and living with his parents (Ebenezer and Susan) and most of his siblings (Silas, Phebe, Job, Ezra, and Sarah). His age is a perfect match for the 21 year old that was living with Anna Gallup and Catherine Stiner in the 1855 census, five years later.

Now I knew that my likely ancestor, Glen Gallup, was the son of Ebenezer and Susan Gallup of Knox, New York, and his siblings included James and Silas (older), and Phebe, Job, Ezra, and Sarah (younger). Among the few other documents that listed a Glen Gallup in New York, I came upon a record called The Genealogical History of the Gallup Family in the United States, and it included some of these exact people. It included Ebenezer and Susan Gallup with four children (their first four) — James, Silas, Glenn, and Phebe. This had to be the same family.

The Genealogical History of the Gallup Family in the United States didn’t list the descendants of Glen and Anna Gallup — Byron, Clinton, Ira, and Ida — but it did list Glen’s ancestors, all the way back to the first Gallup in America, John Gallup of Bridport, England, who, according to other records, “sailed from Plymouth, England, March 20, 1630, in the ship Mary and John, arriving at Nantasket, now Hull, [Massachusetts] May 30th.”

In one fell swoop, I had unlocked the records of seven more generations (and 200 years) of Gallup ancestors who had settled in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and upstate New York. I was traveling down the rabbit hole with terrifying speed.

It turns out that the Gallup family is every bit as venerable as the Whitesell and Atkinson families. There is even an island named for John Gallup in the Boston Harbor. And there is a town called Gallupville — yep, Gallupville — not far from Albany, New York. 43 years after my father died, I felt like his name — the Gallup name — was finally showing it’s worth.

Confirmation

It was only a short time later that I found a record of the marriage of Glen Gallup to Ann Stynen [sic] on January 18, 1855. It was on a page of the Beaverdam Dutch Reformed Church records, found in a different genealogical website.

I also uncovered a marriage record in Toronto, Ontario, in Canada, for Dewitt Clinton Gullup [sic] (Ira’s older brother) confirming that Glen Gullup [sic] and Ann Steiner [sic] were his parents.

My connection with Ebenezer Gallup (Glen’s father) and the rest of the Gallup lineage was even further validated when I completed DNA testing that showed a definite overlap with the DNA of other descendants of Ebenezer and the ancestral Gallups listed in the Genealogical History of the Gallup Family.

An Unexpected Surprise

Although John Gallup arrived only 10 years after the first settlers in New England, I had pretty much given up any hope of tracing my family back to the Mayflower, when I discovered in 2024 that I actually did have a relative on that famous ship!

My 10th great grandparents, John Howland and Elizabeth Tilley, came to Plymouth, Massachusetts on the Mayflower in 1620. Elizabeth Tilley’s parents - my 11th great-grandparents — also came on the Mayflower, but died in the first winter, victims of starvation and disease. (I have included the entire line of my ancestry, from the Mayflower to the present, in an Appendix below).

Modern depiction of The Mayflower

If you could trace all of your ancestors back 13 generations (to the 11th great-grandparent) you would have 8192 ancestors in that row alone (2 to the 13th power). Now… I have traced only one line back that far, but there are still hundreds of direct ancestors listed in the family tree that I keep archived in the Ancestry.com website — The Gallup & Whitesell Family Tree 2020. It’s no wonder that I didn’t follow the branch of my 6th great-grandmother, Eunice Cobb back to the Mayflower on my first (or second, or third) foray into genealogical research. She was only one of 256 potential 6th great-grandparents. I didn’t take any notice of her line until later. (Genealogical research is never complete.)

There may yet be more exciting discoveries in my ancestral past. Most of my branches go back only as far as the first arrivals on American soil. I have only followed the clues to other countries on rare occasions. I have one branch that follows a line of ancestors within the town of Schwanheim (by means of the well preserved church records) in Prussia (Germany), and I had to learn to read a bit of German script along the way. I have leads to many ancestors in Old England, Prussia, and Europe who have yet to be pursued.

However, at this point, I’m more interested in fleshing out the lives of the ancestors that I’ve found so far. It may sound corny, but its really true. Learning the stories of your ancestors makes history come alive. I know a little about the lives of my mother and father, how they came to meet, and how they ended up moving to the Triangle in North Carolina. I’d like to learn more about the lives of the Gallups, the Whitesells, the Knapps, the Atkinsons and all the others who came before.

I’ve included a bit of the stories of only one of the ancestral lines in the Appendix below. Take a look, and you’ll begin to see how far down the rabbit hole genealogy can take you.

APPENDIX

My lineage, from passengers of the Mayflower, to the present:

-John Tilley (1571-1621) & Joan Hurst (1568 - 1621)

Died in the winter of 1621, when nearly half the Mayflower passengers perished due to food shortage and disease, after a late arrival with inadequate shelter and provisions.

-John Howland (1592-1672) & Elizabeth Tilley (1607 - 1687)

John nearly drowned when he was washed overboard the Mayflower during a storm at sea. Fortunately he grabbed a topsail halyard, and survived. He was a servant for the Carver family who took in the orphaned children: Elizabeth Tilley, Desire Minter, and William Latham. Unfortunately the Carvers also died in the spring of 1621, making John a freeman with three young charges. He married Elizabeth about three years later. They had 10 living children, and they have about 2 million American descendants today.

-Desire Howland (1627-1683) & John Gorham (1619-1676)

Story is yet to be told.

-Elizabeth Gorham (1648-1683) & Joseph Hallett (1630-1721)

Story is yet to be told.

-Lois Hallett (1672-1726) & Henry Cobb, Jr. (1665-1725)

Story is yet to be told.

-Eunice Cobb (1693-1759) & Benedam Gallup, Jr. (1693-1755)

Story is yet to be told.

-Col. Nathan Gallup (1727-1799) & Sarah Giddens (1729-1778)

Nathaniel Gallup became Lieutenant Colonel of the 8th militia of New London, Connecticut during the Revolutionary War. He was accused of cowardice, and tried in a court-martial, when he failed to come to the aid of other Patriots who were overrun by the British (led by Benedict Arnold) at the Battle of Groton Heights. In the American rendition of the battle, the patriots at Fort Griswold were massacred (shot or bayoneted) by the British after they surrendered and laid down their guns. Colonel Nathan Gallup was acquitted of his charges, but other soldiers involved in the battle were not so fortunate.

-Sarah Gallup (1751-1799) & Silas Gallup (1749-1796)

These were second cousins who had the same great grandfather, Benadam Gallup, Sr. They helped to establish Knox, New York, a city near Albany.

-Ebenezer Gallup (1795-1865) & Susan Harden (1808-1884)

Ebenezer was the tenth child of Sarah and Silas. Both his parents died before he was five. He was probably raised by his sister, Silence Gallup.

-Glen Gallup (~1834 - Unknown) & Anna Stiner (1834 - Unknown)

Little is known of Glen Gallup, but his older brothers, James and Silas, both moved to Nebraska after the Civil War. Anna Stiner’s mother was listed as “Idiot” or “Insane” in all of her census records, and she must have been mentally impaired. Anna was born out of wedlock, and no father was recorded on the record of her baptism. She was illegitimate.

-Ira James Gallup (1864-1952) & Emma Gorham (1862-1940)

Ira’s brother Leonard Byron Gallup died in a train accident at age 35. Ira subsequently gave his son the very same name. Ira probably married twice (with no children) before he married Emma Gorham, who was already widowed with two children of her own. They had only one son together.

-Leonard Byron Gallup (1910-1953) & Emily Mae Knapp (1909-1976)

One set of my grandparents.

-Gerald Fredric Gallup (1935-1977) & Margaret Ann Whitesell (1935-present)

My parents.

 -Steven Brian Gallup (1964-present) & Dianne Shihadi (1966-present)

A screenshot of five generations of my Ancestry.com family tree