SERENDIPITY

                                                       by Jim Tomes

 

                                  Presented to The Chicago Literary Club

                                                       April 3, 2006

 

  The first public telling of part of this story, which is now a book, was a short luncheon talk I gave at the Newberry Library for the Caxton Club in April, 2000, just five years ago.  My good friend, Ed Quattrocchi, Renaissance scholar and fellow Caxtonian, told me that I “owed it to the club to do a luncheon talk”, and he was right.  The short talk was well received and I was encouraged to follow it up with an article for the The Caxtonian. When I started to write the full story I realized that it would be far too long for an article.  I therefore began to write the book which has since morphed into two related books of over two hundred pages, now virtually finished, to be published later this year.  Then, Tony Batko was also right when he told me I should present a paper to the Chicago Literary Club, and he volunteered me to present it tonight,  So, I give thanks to both Ed and Tony for spurring me on. 

 

  You will be happy to know that I will NOT be reading you the 200 plus page book tonight.

What I have tried to do is summarize the first book about discovering our family’s genealogies,  and hopefully keep most of its best parts to share the experience with you. The second book, a comparison of the religious and scientific views of the history of mankind, and the relationship between science and religion, may be the subject of another talk in the future.  I tried, but it proved impossible to combine the two books in this talk

  

 Why bother with genealogies at all?, Who cares? Isn’t it just an impractical hobby?

Well, yes, it is certainly impractical, but it can also be a source of profound knowledge.  Knowing, and being able to tell your children and grandchildren about the heroics, tragedies, successes and failures of  their ancestors is a very personal way to relate their lives to history.   Also, if you are as lucky as we have been, finding memoirs and journals and books written by our ancestors, they come alive as real people. To read what they thought over 150 years ago, in their own handwriting, is quite moving.

 

  It is also profound in the sense that seeing your own ancestral tree is a personal reminder that none of us lives forever.  Seeing your own name near the bottom of a long genealogical chart makes it very clear that we are each marching in an inexorable column of mortal human beings.

 

 As our youngest daughter said, after seeing her place in a ten-generation family tree:

      “Gee, Dad, we seem to come from a long line of people who have all died!”

 Very true, and a dramatic way of teaching the lesson of every human being’s mortality.

 

  One of the not-so-obvious conceits of genealogy is the choice we all usually make to trace only one or two lines of ancestry that carry our paternal or maternal surnames.  Tomes or Steel for me, and Schaeffer or Raymaley, for Josie.  The conceit is however, necessary because the geometric expansion of the number of each of our ancestors would quickly make our searches impossibly unwieldy if we didn’t limit them. 


 For example; since we all have two parents, and each of them have two parents, etc., the arithmetic illustrates the problem in just ten generations.  The geometric progression of 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, and 1,024, shows that each of us has 1,024 ancestors in just ten generations!  An impossibly huge chart.  It is however very important to remember that if we trace one surname back ten generations we are only seeing 1/1,024th of our genetic heritage at the tenth generation. We are each the product of an enormous gene pool. The recent developments in the science of population genetics, using DNA science, show how all mankind is closely related and has left a traceable trail of its migrations covering the earth.  

 

Counting generations backwards in history is also instructive.   If each generation takes twenty years, ten generations should take 200 years.  But my Tomes family’s ancestry has actually averaged thirty-five years per generation for ten generations, so our direct ancestry goes back 350 years to the 1600's.  Our indirect, collateral, Tomes ancestry goes back to the 1300's in England, another fifteen generations, totaling twenty-five, give or take a few.  Since surnames were rarely used by ordinary people before the 1300's it is extremely rare to find genealogies that go back further in time. 

 

  But, for a scientific and historical perspective, if you count backwards in time to the emergence of Upright Man (Homo Erectus) 1,500,000 years ago from Africa, you get 100,000 generations at 15 yrs/gen.  Or,  if you count backwards 200,000 years ago to the emergence of Homo Sapiens

in Africa, you get 13,300 generations, or 60,000 years ago to the first emigration out of Africa of Homo Sapiens, our common ancestor, you get 4,000 generations, at 15 yrs/gen. (In this remote sense we are all “African-Americans”)  Or, if you count back to the magnificent cave art at Chauvet, in the Ardeche, France, 33,000 years ago, you get 2,200  generations; or to the cave art at Lascaux, 18,000 years ago, you get 1,200 generations. Or, from 5000 BCE when writing first appeared in Sumer, you get 460 generations, and from the beginning of the Egyptian Dynasties in 3,950 BCE, you get 290 generations.   So, ten, or even twenty-five, generations doesn’t get us very far back in history!

 

 Also, for a Biblical perspective, the New Testament shows two separate and very different genealogies for Jesus, one in Matthew and one in Luke.  Matthew  traces 14 generations from Abraham to King David, then 28 more generations from David to Jesus, totaling 42. 

Luke traces backwards in time to David in 43 generations, then on to Abraham in 15 more generations, totaling 58 generations, a difference of 16 generations between Luke and Matthew.

Luke then proceeds to list 20 more generations from Abraham to Adam, totaling 78 generations from Jesus to Adam.  A comparison of the two genealogies also shows almost no similarity between the names, as well as the number of generations.  It is obvious that Matthew and Luke didn’t coordinate their genealogies, but it is also obvious that they each thought it was of great importance to link Jesus to the Old Testament Hebrew heritage of Abraham and David, as fore- told in Isaiah.   And the Old Testament genealogies in Genesis and Chronicles tell an incredibly creative story of the lives of the Prophets whose average life span in Genesis is well over 500 years!  So much for Biblical genealogy.  Most other religions have equally creative genealogies.

 

 

 

 But, the main points are: First, the fact of our inevitable mortality; Second, the personal stories of our ancestors; Third, the historical and religious significance of genealogies; and Fourth, our close genetic relationship with virtually all other human beings.

 

THE SEARCH

   This evening’s talk is mainly the story of a forty-year-long genealogical search that ultimately reunited my long separated family of Tomes ancestors and cousins, and the story of Josie’s ancestors..  The search also enabled me to find and collect the many 19th century books and magazine articles written by my great-grandfather, Dr. Robert Tomes, and also a treasure-trove of his and his father Francis’s unpublished journals, letters, and memoirs.  Most of these manuscripts have now been restored, transcribed and published privately, and are now in the special collections of the Newberry Library.  It also enabled us to restore Josie’s family farm and cemetery.

 

  The search is called  “Serendipitous” because of the repeated accidental good fortune that propelled the search forward, albeit after many long interruptions.  While the results were unusually successful, many other amateur genealogists have told me of similar experiences.  The main lesson of this search for other amateur genealogists is follow up every lead and never give up.  Some serendipitous events will probably happen to keep your search alive.

 

  The word “Serendipitous” was in fact coined by the English novelist, historian, book collector, and founder of the Strawberry Hill Press, Horace Walpole (1717-1797).  It was based upon an Indian fable, “Three Princes of Serendip”, the ancient name for Ceylon, now Sri Lanka.  The fable tells the story of three princes who left Serendip and traveled the ancient world, repeatedly making accidental, but fortuitous discoveries.  The fable thus perfectly describes my own experiences.

 

   The book contains a number of short biographical sketches of my wife Josie’s and my ancestors.  My father’s family surname is Tomes (English) and my mother’s is Steel and Wilson

(Scottish).  The Tomes family group is still quite small, now numbering only about 900 families world-wide, mostly in the United States and England.  They are all originally from the Cotswolds, Gloucestershire and Warwickshire in England.  My collateral Tomes ancestors started coming to America in the late 1600's.  My direct ancestor, Francis Tomes,  came to America in 1815. 

 

  Josie’s family is all Pennsylvania “Dutch”, meaning Deutsch - German speaking from the southern Rhine valley - now Alsace in France, and the Palatinate - now north of Strasbourg in Germany, and western Switzerland.  On Josie’s mother’s side were Schaeffers, Urichs and Witmeyers.  On her father’s side were Raymaleys, Nahligs, Schumachers and Burgers.  Her Schumacher ancestor was with the Mennnonite group led by  Pastorious who settled Germantown near Philadelphia in 1683.  The others followed soon after in the 1700's.

 

 

 

 

  These family stories are not the epic sagas of famous people, but they are the true and often heroic stories of the lives of extended families of real, ordinary people.  Most of them emigrated to America beginning in its early days, took great risks and worked hard to live good lives and, mostly, succeeded.  Such stories are shared by many American families. 

 

  They crossed the Atlantic Ocean from England, Scotland and the Rhineland to Virginia, Pennsylvania and New York on small, dangerous, disease-prone sailing ships.  Some worked off their contracts of servitude and homesteaded frontier farms; others started businesses and traveled throughout frontier America on horseback, stagecoach, wagons, and river boats.  They and their children fought as Yankees in the Revolutionary War and on both the Union and Confederate sides of the Civil War.  Later on, others served during World Wars I and II, the Korean War, Vietnam and Iraq..  They became farmers, soldiers, businessmen and businesswomen, doctors, writers, artists, lawyers, teachers and ministers.  It is, in short, a very personal history of America.  Some of these people are best described by their own journals, memoirs and books, all available at the Newberry Library.

 

     The book also includes brief biographical sketches of some contemporary Tomeses in England whom we call “Our English Cousins”, because we have become quite friendly with them, staying at their homes and welcoming them to our homes here in Wilmette and Chicago.  Chief among them is retired Major Ian M. Tomes , who has provided the key genealogical information to solve the puzzle that stumped us here for over 35 years.  More about “Our English Cousins” in a few minutes.

 

  In Chicago, we are most fortunate to have on our doorstep one of the best genealogical resource libraries in America, The Newberry Library.  In addition to its great humanities collections, The Newberry has a very extensive genealogy collection, and an excellent staff ready to help the novice and the professional in starting and developing their searches.

 

 And we also have some other great institutions here in Chicago for exploring other aspects of the history of mankind:    

 

  The Field Museum, with its magnificent and just reopened permanent exhibit on the Evolving Planet showing the four billion year history of all life on earth; The Lutheran School of Theology, with its continuing annual free to the public course on the Epic of Creation, comparing the theological and scientific views of life on earth; the Oriental Institute, with its extraordinary displays of mankind’s earliest history, from prehistoric times through the cultures of Mesopotamia in the middle east; the Adler Planetarium, with its astronomical view of the universe; and the University of Chicago, with its great library and faculty resources, particularly in comparative religion. 

 

 

 

                                                                                                                       

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE STORY OF THE SEARCH

 

 The story of the search began at the Newberry Library in 1959 where I learned for the first time about the existence of my great-grandfather Dr. Robert Tomes, in the National Encyclopedia of American Biography.  My father had never told me about his grandfather Robert, whom I discovered from his brief biography was a medical doctor who wrote many histories and other books, as well as articles for Harper’s Monthly Magazine, and who traveled extensively in Europe and America in the 1800's.

 

  My father had rarely even talked about his own father who was also a medical doctor, but who died in 1920 before I was born.   My father’s parents had been divorced when he was just 14 years old and my father was given in custody to his father, who carelessly let him drop out of high school, thereby ending his formal education.  The trauma of the divorce and his careless father probably made my father not want to know more about his ancestry.  But my personal curiosity had led me to the Newberry.  When I reported finding Robert’s biography to my father he casually acknowledged his identity and then told me he thought his grandfather was buried in a family cemetery plot at Trinity Church in New York City.

 

 I wrote to Trinity and learned that Robert, his mother Maria Robert Tomes, and my grandfather, Dr. William Tomes, and many other family members were actually buried in the Trinity Cemetery Annex at 153rd Street and Riverside Drive, just south of the George Washington Bridge.  The original Trinity Cemetery in lower Manhattan had been closed in 1845 and Robert’s father, Francis Tomes, had bought the family plot in the Annex in 1852.  The Annex had been donated to the church by John James Audubon, the ornithologist, who was a member of Trinity Church and who owned a farm along the Hudson River.  The Annex land is a steep, twenty-six acre hill that descends toward the river from what is now Broadway, to Riverside Drive, between 153rd and 155th Streets.  Audubon and many other early New York City families are also buried there. 

 

  The discovery of Robert’s biography started me on a search for copies of his books, but that was before the Internet and my occasional searching in book stores for his books proved fruitless.  However, the first book came to me, serendipitously, from a neighbor, Tom Cullen, in Wilmette who called me to say that he had a three volume history of the Civil War, “The War With The South”,  by a Robert Tomes and did I want it?   I of course said yes and offered to pay him, but he refused payment and generously gave the set to me.  Over the years since then I have been able to acquire multiple copies of all of Robert’s books and articles, mainly via the Internet. 

 

 

 

  However, in 1959 I was still unable to trace Robert’s father Francis who was described in the cemetery records only as “Francis Tomes from England”, the purchaser of the plot, but he was not buried there.  Since I was then a very busy young lawyer and husband about to become a father, I couldn’t spend much time on genealogy.  So, the search for Francis Tomes did not produce any results beyond that 1959 dead-end for the next thirty five years.  The intervening years were nevertheless filled with many interesting serendipitous experiences that ultimately led to success.

 

   The next serendipitous event was that in 1961 a business associate and scientist friend, Dr. Arthur Cox, gave me a copy of a biography of Sir John Tomes (1815-1895), The Father of British Dentistry.   I read the book and learned quickly that Sir John was not a direct ancestor, but his ancestral home was at Weston-on-Avon in the Cotswolds, just south of Stratford-on-Avon. 

 

  Then, beginning in 1965, my business travels took me to London frequently and, since I particularly enjoyed the Cotswolds, I visited the church in Weston-on-Avon during a weekend in England.  I will never forget that cold and wet November afternoon when genealogy became a very personal experience for me.  I was standing alone in the church cemetery searching for names on gravestones when looked down at a very old, flat black grave-stone lying

 in the grass and saw my own name “James Tomes” inscribed!   I truly shivered, thought sympathetically of old Scrooge in Dickens’ Christmas Carol, and sought the church warden.

He told me that there were no Tomeses living then in Weston, but directed me to the nearby town of Long-Marston where he said there was still an old manor house owned by a Tomes.

 

  I drove the few miles to Long-Marston and, after inquiring first with the post-mistress I found the sexton of the village’s ancient Norman church, St. James’s.   It turned out that the church stood off the road adjacent to “The King’s Lodge”, the 16th century ancestral Tomes manor house.  It was then owned by retired Brigadier Clement Tomes, who was then living in Dorset, but has since died. 

 

  St. James’ sexton, Harold Newman, his wife Irene, and their daughter Linda, lived across the road from the church and couldn’t have been more hospitable.  They invited me into their thatched cottage for tea and a chat.  Irene was the head of the local Women’s Institute which had recently produced a manuscript history of Long-Marston, including a brief genealogy of the local Tomeses.  I also learned, and noted for future reference to Josie, that Linda was enrolled as a student in a “Nanny College”. (more serendipity)

 

  The Tomes manor house was called “The King’s Lodge” because in the year 1651, its owner, a “John Tomes, yeoman”, had provided a night’s refuge to the Prince of Wales, the future King Charles II when he was fleeing Oliver Cromwell after losing the battle of Worcester, a few miles west of Long-Marston.  Prince Charles’s escape to France via the Boscobel tree and various other overnight refuges is a very exciting, romantic and true story.  In 1660 Prince Charles was restored to the throne as King Charles II and, it turned out, didn’t forget John Tomes, one of whose daughters, Alice Tomes, married Thomas Welles, a 17th century colonial governor of what is now Connecticut, by granting that colony special constitutional autonomy and a unique form of representative government.  Connecticut still calls itself “The Constitution State”.

  So, I had found an English Tomes family with a dramatic claim to an exciting bit of English history, in a picturesque and friendly village in the Cotswolds.  Even though neither Sir John Tomes or John Tomes, yeoman, or Brigadier Clement Tomes were direct ancestors, they were part of the small Tomes clan, and would have to do, very well indeed, until we found the real ones. 

 

   As I was traveling to England frequently during those years, Josie and I returned to Long-Marston on occasion becoming acquainted with the Newmans.  In the early 1970's we employed Linda as a nanny for our four young children at our home in Wilmette.  Linda is an exceptionally bright and caring person and she became a close friend with whom we are still in touch.  She now has four grown children of her own, one a doctor, one a lawyer, one an accomplished artist at the Royal Academy and one still in university.  A few years later we stayed at The King’s Lodge which had by then been sold by the Tomeses and become a bed and breakfast.

 

OUR ENGLISH COUSINS

  Ultimately, the Newmans told retired Colonel L.T. “Dick” Tomes, one of the sons of the late Brigadier Tomes, that they knew us as American Tomeses who were interested in family history. 

Colonel Dick Tomes then wrote to me in 1991 offering to put me in touch with his nephew, Major Ian Tomes, their family’s amateur genealogist, who was then serving with the British Army in Zimbabwe, Africa.  I sent Colonel Tomes what information I had about our ancestry, which only went back to Francis Tomes, about whom we knew only that he had emigrated from England to America in the early 19th century.  Dick promised to pass the information on to his nephew Ian when he returned to England.

 

  In 1992 Josie and I visited Dick and his wife Jane at their home in Dorset and became good friends.  As we became acquainted with them we learned that Dick had been a British Army captain serving with the infantry in Belgium and France at the beginning of WW II in 1939-40.

He had in fact been one of the Warwickshire Regiment soldiers ordered to “fight to the last man and the last round” in defense of the perimeter south of Dunkirk in May of 1940.  He did so,  was wounded firing an anti-tank gun against oncoming German SS tanks, was captured, and spent the rest of the war in prisoner of war camps.  He actually escaped twice, but was recaptured and was finally rescued by American forces at the end of the war.  Jane had enlisted in the British WREN forces at age 17 in 1940 and served as an ambulance driver in Italy and Austria during the war.  Dick and Jane met after war in Trieste, were married and have two children.  Dick stayed in the Army, serving as an intelligence officer in Europe and Washington, DC, and eventually became a Brigadier and retired as a Colonel to Dorset where they opened a book shop in Axminster, nearby their retirement home in Hawkchurch.  Dick sadly died at age 87 in 2000.  There is a memorial to him at the church in Hawkchurch, where Jane is still the leader of the church bell ringers.  This last December we stayed with Jane at her home and enjoyed her intelligent and cheerful company once again.  Dick and Jane will always exemplify the quiet, modest courage and decency of the English people. 

 

 

 

 

 Dick’s older brother, retired Air Commodore John Tomes (RAF) is a 1933 graduate of Oxford where he also was a reserve pilot in the RAF.  After Oxford he was posted on active duty to Cairo where he met his wife to be, Joanne Maxwell, whom he taught to fly while they were in Egypt.  We have a wonderful 1934 picture of Joanne in her flying suit with helmet and goggles.  During the war John was a bomber squadron commander in the RAF flying missions over Europe and also a member of the RAF staff .  John also stayed in military service after the war and was posted to various command positions in Europe and England.  After retiring as an Air Commodore (Brigadier) he served as a consultant in Paris for seven years and then retired to Bath, England where he and Joanne still live in a spacious apartment overlooking the Avon river.  John continues to write travel guides and histories and Joanne still knits beautiful sweaters for all of her grand children and great-grand children, including our grand-children.  We were happy to celebrate John and Joanne’s 93rd birthdays in Bath in December.

 

  The late Brigadier Clement Tomes (1882-1972) was also a professional soldier, serving first in India and then as an infantry officer in Belgium (Mons and Ypres) and France throughout World War One.  He was wounded and decorated for valor and stayed in military service until retiring as a Brigadier after World War II.  Clement’s brother, Geoffrey (1884-1915) also served as an infantry officer, first in India and then at Gallipoli in World War I where he was decorated for valor and then killed leading a company of Gurkha soldiers. (Incidentally, my father also served at Ypres in 1918 in the American army)

 

  Major Ian Tomes (born 1940), is a graduate of Sandhurst and served as an infantry officer in Northern Ireland, Germany, Hong Kong, West Berlin, Nigeria, Ghana and Zimbabwe.  He too was decorated for valor receiving the Military Cross for combat service.  He met and married his Swiss wife Verena while she was serving as a nurse in Africa.  They have two sons, one of whom, Sasha (born 1969), is now a Major in the British Army, serving in Kuwait, after prior service in charge of the Household Cavalry at Windsor Castle, and the armored infantry in Bosnia and Iraq.  Sasha has two young sons, Harvey and Jasper Tomes..

 

  Thus, we are collaterally related to a remarkable family of “English Tomes Cousins” with whom we have become good friends during the past ten years. 

 

  BACK TO THE SEARCH

  Now, picking up again where we left off with the search.  Major Ian Tomes returned to England from Africa in 1993, retired from the army and resumed his interest in genealogy.  In February, 1994 he astounded me by sending a detailed genealogy of Francis Tomes’s ancestry !

 

  By and extraordinary stroke of luck, through Ian’s genealogical research he discovered that my great-great grandfather Francis Tomes knew and was collaterally related to Ian’s great-great-great uncle, Robert Fisher Tomes, a Cotswold bachelor farmer, and the English Tomes family’s 19th century genealogist!   Our ancestors had compared and exchanged genealogies in the 1850's and Robert Fisher Tomes had kept all the records in a large “tin box” that ultimately was passed down through the generations to Ian. 

 

 

  By this serendipitous chain of events we found the “needle-in-the-haystack” information which reunited our two branches of the Tomes clan.   And we finally had the information about the identity and ancestry of Francis Tomes.  What we didn’t know then was just how much more

was yet in store for us to discover. 

 

  The next stroke of serendipitous luck came about while I was rummaging through my late father’s own “tin box” of family records. My father had died in 1975 in California and although I had been with him during the last few months of his life I had to leave the gathering up of his few things to a friend.  The friend packed up his things in two suitcases and sent them to me and I stored them in our basement next to the furnace to keep them dry, but didn’t open the suitcases until 1994 after Ian had found the contents of his “tin box”.  One of the items I found was a

scrap of a newspaper item sent to my father by his sister in 1936,  announcing the marriage of one of their New York City cousins, Joan Elspeth Tomes (1901-1980), to Arthur Windham Baldwin (1904-1976), the son of Lord Stanley Baldwin (1867-1947) who was three times prime minister of England in the 1920's and 30's.  I had never even heard of this bit of family history, but I sent it on to Ian.  Elspeth was the youngest daughter of Charles Alexander Tomes (1854-1933) who I learned later had witnessed my grandfather’s will. 

 

  Ian, characteristically, researched the descendants of Stanley Baldwin and found the present Lord Baldwin (born 1938), who turned out to be a graduate of Trinity College in Cambridge, and in 1994 a friendly teacher in Oxford, England.  This Lord Edward Baldwin apologized for not being able to help us because of his wife’s illness, but referred us to his “American cousin” Alexander Hadden Tomes, then living in Boston and New York.

 

 Lord Baldwin, “Edward” to the family, has “made the cut” during the recent reductions in the House of Lords, and is currently still serving as a member of its Select Committee on Health.  He has sadly however suffered the loss of his lovely wife, Lady Sarah “Sally” whom we met in 1997.  Edward continues to live in Oxford with his three sons.  Josie and I have had the pleasure of seeing Edward in London for dinner and for a few luncheons as Edward’s guests at the House of Lords, most recently this January.   Edward is a charming, modest, accomplished man whose friendship we cherish. 

 

  By November, 1994 Ian had produced a detailed “pedigree” of our branch of the Tomes family, focusing on great-great-grandfather Francis Tomes who was born in Chipping Campden, England in 1780.  His father, Richard, was baptised in March, 1745 in Bidford-on-Avon and his grandfather, Benjamin (1711-1786) “the sadler of Bidford”, was baptised, married and buried at St. Laurence Church in Bidford, and his great-grandfather, also Benjamin ( born 1680) was married in 1702 at St. James’s Church in Chipping Campden and moved to Broadway, where they baptised two of their children at the beautiful ancient 12th century church, St. Edburgha, which still sits in an isolated rural setting, and then moved to Bidford.  We have no records further back about their ancestors, but since people didn’t move about very far in those days it is probable that they lived in Campden, Broadway and Bidford for many prior generations.  They had to have been a hardy lot, suffering through the plagues and the English Civil Wars in the 1600's and worse, in the centuries before.

 

 

 

  So, starting with our grandson, Alexander Steel Tomes, our Tomes ancestry goes back ten generations to the 1600's. Our collateral Tomes ancestors, via Ian’s family, trace back to the 1300's.   I was now beginning to take a very personal interest in English history.  We had visited Chipping Campden, Broadway and Bidford on previous trips to England, without having any idea they were actually the homes and churches of my ancestors. 

 

  Now we had a pedigree documented by our own family’s genealogist.  Ian Tomes always says he is just an amateur, but he certainly does professional work.  Ian and his wife Verena have since retired to a beautiful small farm overlooking the hills above Cheddar in Somerset.  Without Ian’s skill and willing help we would simply not have the genealogical information necessary for the book. 

 

THE AMERICAN COUSINS

 

   Following up on Edward Baldwin’s lead I telephoned Alexander Hadden Tomes who turned out to be a genealogy buff whose permanent home was in Tuxedo Park, New York. We arranged to meet at the Racquet Club in New York City where he turned out to be quite friendly and generous, but a very eccentric and tragic figure.  He was about 6' 6" tall, wore disheveled clothes and a baseball cap, had extremely thick glasses, and carried a #7 iron golf club as a cane.  He was almost an apparition!   He was born in 1931 as the son of  a very successful Wall Street investment banker who later experienced a financial disaster during the Great Depression  in the 1930's, and then, through more bad luck, caused Hadden to have a debilitating medical treatment.  As a young man Hadden had been an outstanding athlete, winning championships in golf, tennis, billiards and squash while at St. Paul’s prep school, and at Harvard University, following his father’s and grandfather’s footsteps.   He also graduated from Harvard Law School, but by then had developed a severe glaucoma.  The treatment selected for curing the glaucoma failed and left him legally blind, forced to wear very thick magnifying glasses which isolated him from his athletic interests and the practice of law.    When I met him in 1994 he was living alone in a small cottage in Tuxedo Park, NY, down the hill from his family’s former mansion, surrounded by family memorabilia and his memories of better days.  We became good friends quickly because he was quite happy to meet a new cousin with an interest in genealogy.  He gave me the original 270 page  manuscript of Francis Tomes’s 1837-1839 travel journals and a perfect copy of the bound printed book,”Our Great Grandfather”, an 1875  book of over 300 letters written by Francis to his daughter Mary Elizabeth,”Polly”, Tomes Burckhardt.  He also gave me an original 1855 oil painting portrait of Francis Tomes pointed by J.C. Horseley, R.A.   It was in bad shape, but I have had it restored.

 

   Hadden also gave me the names and addresses of all my other American cousins and therefore provided me the link to my extended American family.  He tragically died in 1997, just a few years after we had met in 1994.   After he died I learned from one of his friends that he had asked that I give his eulogy at Christ Church, in Greenwich, Connecticut where his family had worshiped and had been buried for generations.  I was of course honored, and did so where I met many of his life-long friends

   I introduced myself to the other new-found cousins through letters and some personal visits and they welcomed me into the greater Tomes family.  They have all generously given me pictures, letters and other memorabilia from my side of the family that had been handed down through their ancestors.  When they learned that I was then in the publishing business they also began to give me the originals of some of our ancestor’s journals, memoirs, books and letters which I then undertook to transcribe and publish for them.  It was an extraordinary experience to discover a complete, and very friendly, but previously unknown extended family.

 

   The only problem created by Ian’s and Hadden’s gold-mine of information, was that we now had almost too much information. Certainly too much for this talk.   There were eight new-found cousins: “Hadden” Tomes, Arthur Tomes Lewry, Arthur C. Tomes, Mary Tomes Prinz, Francis Philip Tomes, Gordon Fairburn, Jim Pott and Lord Edward Baldwin.  And they each had their own sets of collateral ancestors and siblings and children and grandchildren.  Far too much information for this short talk, so I will only be able to hit a few highlights and keep moving on.

 Because of the time limitation for this evening’s talk I can only recite a brief list and a short comment of the other cousins, and the lives of Francis Sr., Francis Jr., Charles, “Polly” and Robert.

 

  Francis Jr. (1813-1898) Hadden’s great-grandfather and Robert’s eldest brother.  He  inherited the family business, ran it well until the 1870's when it went bankrupt in a Wall Street financial panic.  Had to sell the family mansion on five acres of land next to Greenwich Christ Church, since given to church and restored as the Tomes-Higgins house, designed by Calvert Vaux, now a national historic landmark.

 

  Charles Alexander Tomes (1854-1933) He founded Shewan-Tomes trading company in Hong-Kong, sold his interest to Hutcheson’s, now Hutcheson’s-Whampoa.  Shewan-Tomes still exists.

He also gave the “Tomes Cup” sailing trophy to Royal Hong-Kong Yacht Club, which is still awarded every year along with the “Lipton Cup”. One of Charles’s daughters was Elspeth Tomes.

 

 Gordon Fairburn (1941-2000) A great-grandson of Mary Elizabeth “Polly” Tomes Burckhardt, the mother of Charlotte Louise Burckhardt, whose full-length portrait was painted by John Singer Sargent in 1888 as a gift.  Sargent courted her at age 19, but the courtship waned, Charlotte married another man and sadly died of tuberculosis at age 29.  The portrait was later given by Charlotte’s sister Valerie to the Metropolitan Museum where it hangs as part of permanent Sargent collection. Gordon died prematurely of cancer in 2000.  Gordon’s wife Phoebe still has

 a Sargent portrait of Valerie.

 

  Arthur Tomes Lewry  (born 1935 -) grandson of my grandfather’s brother Arthur.  Retired Ford design engineer - gave me Robert’s manuscripts, and helped with publishing.  His sister-in-law also gave me Robert’s copy of 4th Edition of Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary and other Tomes memorabilia. 

 

 

 

 

  Arthur Charles Tomes ( born 1920 -) was a  WW II B-29 pilot, Represented American Air Force at 1995 American-Japanese 50th years reconciliation in Himeji, Japan.  Art is the great-grandson of  Rev. Charles Tomes, whose memorial he told me about just before I was traveling on my first ever trip to Nashville, Tennessee.  When I found the memorial badly in need of repair I called Art and we agreed to restore it. 

 

  Rev. Charles Tomes (1814-1857) His first wife died in the birth of her second child, Charles Jr.

Charles remarried the daughter of Bishop Otey of Nashville.   All the Tomes cousins contributed to restoring his monument in Nashville’s Olivet Cemetery.  One son, Francis Iselin Tomes, VMI cadet volunteered at age 17 for battle of New Market in May, 1864, then in battle of Richmond until December, 1864, then medical leave, then got to New York City after war, but died in 1866 and is buried in Trinity Annex cemetery. Another son, Charles Jr. was Union infantry Lieutenant, but died at age 29 and also buried in Trinity Annex. A truly fratricidal war.

 

  Francis Tomes Sr. (1780-1869) Second son of Richard Tomes who died when Francis was 5 years old.  He was a very good student, but there wasn’t enough money to continue his education. So, in his early teens he became a clerk to a Birmingham businessman who staked him to start an export-import business in New York City in 1815.  He married Maria Lloyd Roberts, 10 years younger girl from Dolgelly, Wales in 1812.  They had seven children who survived to adult-hood. 

 He became a very successful businessman, traveled throughout America and frequently back and forth to  England, importing English manufactured goods to America and exporting cotton to England.  He kept fascinating travel journals which we have transcribed and published for the family.  I relate a detailed story of his life and his journals in my book. He retired to live in England in 1850's.  He was separated from Maria, but they stayed married and he supported her

in grand style until they both died in 1869. Francis is buried in England and Maria in New York.

 

 Dr. Robert Tomes (1817-1882) He attended Columbia Grammar School with Herman Melville, and Evert Duyckinck.  He attended Washington (Now Trinity) College in Hartford, Connecticut, starting at age 14 from 1832-1836, then medical school in Edinburgh from 1836-40, then graduate medical studies in Paris. France from 1841-42.  He then returned to New York City, practiced medicine and began writing for the Democratic Review, Literary World and New York Post.  Became ship’s surgeon for trip around the horn to San Francisco, 1848-49. Robert’s memoirs about all these times are good stories and full of vivid images. He returned to New York and continued the part-time practice of medicine and writing in New York.  He traveled as the New York Post reporter with, and wrote a book about, the inaugural trip of the Panama Railroad in 1855.  He wrote many other books, including biographies, and the Narrative of Cdre Perry’s Expedition to Japan.  He also wrote a three volume Battles of America By Sea and Land, and during Civil War, a serialized report of the war, published in 1866 as a three volume War With The South. Also served as a medical doctor with the Sanitary Commission during Civil War.  He married Catherine Fasnet in 1859, had three children, Catherine (1860-1920), Arthur (1863-1922), and William (1865-1920).  He was U.S. Consul at Rheims, France in 1866-67 and wrote The Champagne Country about Rheims and champagne making.  Moved family to Wiesbaden, Germany where his boys were enrolled in Gymnasium and Catherine schooled at Chateau Thierry. He also wrote many articles for Harper’s Monthly from Wiesbaden.  He returned with his family to America in 1880, bought side-by-side houses for them in Brooklyn, and died in 1882. 


 

Grandfather Wm. A Tomes (1865-1920) Attended Yale and then Columbia Medical School.

Practiced medicine in Brooklyn, Married  Julia  Hall and had three children, Valerie, Yvonne and my father, William. Divorced in 1908. 

 

 Father, Wm. A Tomes Jr. (18994-1975) Left high school at age 14, joined Troop C of New York National Guard Cavalry and served on Mexican Border in 1916-17.  Recalled as machine gunner in 27th New York National Guard infantry division.  Served in France in 1918-19, fought in three major battles; Ypres, Hindenburg Line, and St. Souplet, plus many other smaller engagements.

Married Betty Steel in 1926, moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin where my brother Bill and I were born in 1927 and 1929.  Moved to Cleveland, lost business and home in 1930's Great Depression.

Moved to Chicago.   Betty died in 1957, remarried Helen Foote who died in 1973, and then died in 1975.  I wrote his biography, based on his letters to his mother, plus a book written by a fellow machine gunner.  Also was generously given a six volume set of Arthur Conan Doyle’s History of the Great War by Fred Kittle.  Doyle was present at the Hindenburg Line on the day of the battle.

 

 My Scottish ancestry: James Steel (1870-1947), Sarah Wilson (1872-1951), Rev Alexander Wilson (1840-1920) 

 

  James’s ancestors were Ebenezer (1843-1900), a weaver turned insurance man, and Eban

(1815-1885), a coal miner.  The ancestral records for both the Steels and the Wilsons extend back in time to the 1600's. 

 

 

 

 

 

  JOSIE’S PENNSYLVANIA “DUTCH” ANCESTORS

 

  The search for Josie’s ancestors has been more straight forward and less serendipitous than for the Tomeses because they are all Pennsylvania Dutch (Deutsch) and they have mostly lived in their present American geographic areas for over 250 years.  They kept their old family Bibles, furniture and Frakturs, buried their ancestors in local cemeteries, have regular family reunions and have good local history museums.    There has also been a considerable literature created about the history of Pennsylvania and the immigration records of the Pennsylvania German Pioneers are readily available.  Also, one of Josie’s cousins, Sylvia (Raymaley) Duncan has done excellent work as the Raymaley family genealogist.  But it still required considerable digging through old records and walking through old cemeteries to gather all the other information.

 

  Josie’s full name is Joann Schaeffer, Witmeyer, Raymaley Tomes, reflecting the names of some, but not all of her ancestors.  Others were named Urich, Schumacher, Burger, Nahlig and Brubaker.  100 % Pennsylvania Dutch.  The term usually covers all those immigrants and their descendants who came to America between 1630 and 1900 from the Rhineland countries of what is now western Germany north of Strasbourg, Alsatian France and south western Switzerland.

This area is loosely referred to as the “Palatinate”


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 One of the Pioneer records shows a Hans Nicholas Eisenhauer, the great-great-great grandfather of General and president Dwight D. Eisenhower.  Hans arrived at Philadelphia on the ship Euopa on November 20, 1741.  He settled on land in Lebanon County - where Josie’s family settled - and had three sons, Martin, Peter and John.  Ike was descended from Peter.

 

PURE PENNSYLVANIA DUTCH

  One of Josie’s maternal ancestors, Johanne Urich and his family were among the group of German refugees who had gathered in England in 1708 and were persuaded to travel to New York to settle Livingston Manor to provide the English Navy with lumber, pitch, tar and turpentine from the forests of New York.   They were shipped in a convoy of 10 ships in December, 1709 and arrived in New York in July of 1710 after a storm-tossed, illness plagued, deadly voyage. Upwards of 500 souls died en route and many more were fatally ill on arrival. Small-pox, cholera, typhus, consumption (tuberculosis), influenza and “childbed fever” (septicemia) were simply untreatable.  And one of the ships was lost with all on board. The scheme, proposed by the Governor of New York, John Hunter and John Livingston to Queen Anne, ultimately failed and left the survivors of the original 3,000 refugees stranded in the forest.

 

  One of those survivors was Johanne Urich and his family who dispersed with a small group,

walking overland to Schoharie, New York at the invitation of the Iroquois Indians whose chief they had met during their stay in England.  They ultimately left Schoharie in 1727 and rafted 300 miles down the Susquehana River, past what is now Harrisburg, to the Swatara Creek.  They then walked and pulled their few belongings up the Swatara Creek to the Tulpehoeken Creek, between what is now Lebanon and Myerstown, Pennsylvania, where they settled.  Their original farmstead, and Josie’s other ancestors farm are still there on the site of the original settlement. 

 

  Johanne’s grandson, Valentine Urich, was born at Tulpehoeken in 1740 and died there in 1812. He served as a foot soldier in George Washington’s army during the Revolution.  Valentine’s grand-daughter, Magdalena Urich (1808-1888) married Jacob Schaeffer (1808-1881), of the neighboring farm.  Together they built the house and barn on what became Josie’s family farm on Halfway Drive between Lebanon and Myerstown.  Magdalena’s and Jacob’s names are inscribed on a stone mounted at the peak of the barn roof.  They are buried together in the Union Church cemetery in Myerstown. The Tulpehoeken Creek still runs nearby and the neighboring farm still

 has the house built by Valentine Urich.

 

  Jacob Schaeffer was the great-great-grandson of Philip Schaeffer who emigrated from Alsace to America in 1744, bought the Halfway Drive farm in 1755 from a grantee of Willliam Penn, and died there in late 1759.  The evidence that Philip came from Alsace is that there is still a small village near Colmar with the name “Schaeffersheim”.  It is an ancient village with the barns still connected to their houses and narrow streets all leading to the old church, and all the objects in the local museums look just like the things Josie has inherited.

 

  We found the record of Philip’s emigration to America in the Pennsylvania German Pioneers books.  He arrived in Philadelphia on November 2nd, 1744 on the Friendship.  He took his oath to the Crown by making his mark in the same way he acknowledged his agreement to purchase the farm by a deed dated 1755.  Since he was not literate he was probably also a “redemptioner”, owing the cost of his transportation to America to whomever bought his indenture.  Working off his indenture and saving money probably accounts for the eleven years between his arrival at Philadelphia and his purchase of the farm.  A heroic task!  We have his original 1755 deed as well as subsequent deeds granting portions of the land his sons.  Found in a shoe box in Josie’s mother’s attic!

 

Jacob and Magdalena’s son, Isaac Urich Schaeffer, (1839-1915) married Elizabeth Brubaker (1841-1895), whose only surviving adult child was Agnes Rachael Schaeffer (1870-1939), Josie’s grandmother.  Agnes grew up living on the farm and graduated from a normal school to become a teacher.   She married Dr. Harry Calvin Witmeyer (1874-1957) who was first a teacher and then became a homeopathic doctor, graduating from Hahneman Medical College.  He began his practice as a true “horse and buggy” doctor and served his patients out of an office in his home at 500 N. 8th Street in Lebanon, Pa.  We have his teacher’s desk, his doctor’s office desk, his medical instruments, and a window sign reading “House calls - One Dollar”.  Times have changed.

 

 

  Josie’s mother, the only child of Harry and Agnes, Elizabeth Schaeffer Witmeyer Raymaley (1902-1989) was an accomplished woman for her day.  She graduated from Hood College in Frederick,  Maryland and was teacher before she married Francis A. Raymaley, Josie’s father.

After they separated in 1937 she returned with Josie to Lebanon where they lived with Dr. Witmeyer.  She encouraged Josie’s many interests in reading the classics and taking her to Philadelphia and Lebanon theater and concerts.   When Josie’s mother moved to a nursing home in 1987 we became the managers of her properties and discovered that the Schaeffer farm had fallen into near terminal disrepair.

 

We decided to restore it which took ten years, but was the right thing to do.  I literally had a vision of old Philip Schaeffer sitting by side of the road with his head in hands, bemoaning the fact that his beloved farm was so run down.  After the restoration was complete we had the vision that he was now standing by the side of the road waving a friendly greeting to us as we passed by.   We did our duty to Philip and his family who worked so hard to create the farm.

 

  During the restoration we also concluded that since neither we nor anyone in our family wanted to continue owning or maintaining the farm, we would sell it.  However, before selling we also restored the small family cemetery (50' x 50') that still stands at the top of the cornfield hill on the farm. We rebuilt the wall, raised the sunken stones and installed a simple granite monument that recites Josie’s genealogy from Philip Schaeffer to the present.  We then had the cemetery re-consecrated by Rev. Elvin Horst, our restoration contractor who is also a Mennonite minister.  In 1997 we sold the farm to a Mennonite family who agreed to our condition that we retain the title and right to own,  maintain and visit the cemetery. 

 

  Josie’s paternal ancestry is also pure Pennsylvania Dutch; Remelis, Burgers, Nahligs and Schumachers.  Josie’s father, Francis Alvin Raymaley (1903-1973), was born in a log cabin in Penn Township, Westmoreland County, near Pittsburgh.  His family was quite poor so he had to borrow money, which he ultimately repaid from a man who wanted to help, and he worked his way through college at Penn State University, graduating with a degree in agriculture in 1926. 

He was a teacher, then married Josie’s  mother in 1929 and moved to Bridgeton, New Jersey where he was the County Agriculture Agent.   He served as a U.S. Navy officer during WW II from 1942 to 1946 as a food production and supply officer in the Pacific theater, New Zealand and Australia, and retired with the rank of Commander two Navy commendations; a Bronze Star, and a citation from the United Kingdom Ministry of Food for his war-time achievements.

  In 1946 he became an executive with Seabrook Farms and later with American Cyanamid.  And,  in 1973, as Director of the Division of Rural Resources of the State of New Jersey he received the Distinguished Service Award, signed by president Nixon and presented to him by the U. S. Secretary of Agriculture.  Farm boy, born in a log cabin!

 

  He was divorced from Josie’s mother in 1952, remarried in 1955 and died in 1973 at age 70.  He was given a Quaker memorial service at his request and is buried at Fernwood cemetery, north of  Bridgeton, New Jersey.

 

  “Ray’s” ancestry begins in the Palatinate with Nicolas Remeli (1678-1748).  One of Nicolas’s sons, Ambrose (1702-1776) emigrated to America in 1749 on the ship Lydia in 1749.  He made the voyage with his wife Anna Catherine Schick and three sons, Michael (Josie’s direct ancestor), George and John and two daughters.  They settled in Northampton County, north of Allentown.

Nicolas also had a son, George who emigrated to America from Alsasce and fought in the Revolutionary War.  Family tradition tells us that his son, also named George, carried water to the wounded American soldiers after the battle of Brandywine Creek. 

 

  Sylvia Hague Duncan, one of Josie’s cousins who is the Raymaley family genealogist has reported that the Remeli son operated a sawmill that they brought from Alsace and became pioneer builders in Northampton County.   Sylvia also reports that “Nine of our Raymaley ancestors were enrolled in the American Revolution.  President John Adams proposed special

awards (details in the genealogy) for Ambrose and George and Jacob”. 

 

  Michael Remeli moved to Westmoreland County near Pittsburgh in 1767 after the 1763

Battle of Bushy Run which ended the Seven-Year War and made area safe for settlement.

Ray’s ancestral line proceeded through many generations to Ray’s father, Parmenus (1868-1945) who married Angeline Neighly Burger (1869-1924).  It was Parmenus who changed the spelling of the family name by “adding two Ys to make it easier to pronounce”.   Angeline was a grand-daughter of George Gottfried Ephriam Burger (1791-1861) who emigrated to Harrison City, Pa in 1812 from Germany.  Unlike most immigrants George was quite literate, educated at Heidelberg University, spoke five languages and was a teacher and preacher.  He became the Westmoreland County Clerk where his written work is still displayed for its beautiful script.  We have three marvelous specimens of his work - illuminated manuscripts - “Frakturs” - records of the birth, baptism and marriage of family members.  His Frakturs are noted and reproduced in collectors encyclopedias.  We also have his restored, handmade long rifle which he carried across the Alleghenies in 1812.  And we have the desk he made from a walnut tree he felled and made in 1834.  He owned a farm where McCullough Village now stands near Harrison City. His grave and that of his wife are well marked in Woodlawn Cemetery at the Denmark Manor Reformed Church.  George’s wife, Elizabeth Schumacher burger (1790-1863) was also descended from Pennsylvania German Pioneers.  Her father, William, was an officer in George Washington’s army and one of her ancestors came to America in 1863 with Pastorious to the original Germantown.

  Thus we traced Josie’s maternal and paternal ancestry from the earliest immigration to Pennsylvania until the present.  She is truly 100% Pennsylvania Dutch.

 

     THE INHERITANCE

  These groups of immigrants made an unusually significant contribution to the founding of America. They settled the land, and through their exceptional skills and capacity for hard work built farms and villages and cities that continue to exist and thrive until the present.  Their religious practices were mostly peace loving and private.  Their churches continue until the present.  They supported and risked their lives and fortunes in the American Revolution.  They formed egalitarian, democratic local governments.  They built roads and canals, Conestoga wagons, and, ultimately, railroads.  They pioneered the American way toward the west. And they left us a heritage for which we and our descendants will be forever grateful.

 

  As the only child of an only child Josie has inherited many beautiful things acquire or made by her ancestors.  These include furniture, such as Dutch cupboards, desks, dressers, chairs, blanket and bride’s chests, beds, rockers, a cradle, and a chiming tall case “grandfather’s clock” that still keeps time.  Josie also has a collection of Pennsylvania Dutch pottery, cooking and eating utensils, quilts and blankets, Frakturs, and Bibles and schoolbooks.  And we have a large handmade box full of her ancestor’s woodworking tools.   It is Josie’s intent to pass on all these treasures from the past to our children as reminders of their heritage.