April 2007 Self Seekers Newsletter

SELF SEEKERS:

THE SELF FAMILY ASSOCIATION QUARTERLY ONLINE NEWSLETTER SUPPLEMENT

Co-Hosts
Tim W. Seawolf Self
Barbara Ann Peck
seawolf@selfroots.com
Volume 10, no. 2 April, 2007
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WELCOME

Welcome to volume 10, no. 2 of the quarterly online newsletter supplement to "Self Portraits: The Self Family NetLetter," the Website dedicated to Self family research at http://www.selfroots.com

You are receiving this newsletter because you were kind enough to join "Self Seekers: The Self Family Association." We appreciate all of your contributions, large and small, and we hope you will continue to support our page, our surname list, and this newsletter.

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TIMELESS TIME

Looking at the first (January) issue of this Supplement, I see the word "Christmas," and it seems so far in the past that I can hardly remember it. Those cold days are buried under the first flowers of Spring. Warmer weather is just around the corner--we can feel the breezes tickling our cheeks and inviting us out of doors. The months ahead beckon with vacations to visit the homes of our ancestors, to walk through cemeteries, to share the rejuvenation of the earth with those who lie beneath it. Have a wonderful Easter season and lots of May blossoms! And enjoy the long hours of daylight, all the better to read by!

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NOTES ON "OLDE" ROBERT SELFE
by Barbara Peck and by Tim Seawolf-Self

Way back in 1998, we presented an article in this "Self Seekers" newsletter that suggested London, rather than Wiltshire, as a possible place to take the search for our Southern progenitor, "Olde" Robert Selfe. It appears now that this guess was correct. A researching cousin from California has verified that his family was in London in the latter half of the sixteenth century--and he has proven a connection that may identify "Olde" Robert himSelf.

BLIND ALLEYS, SHADY LANES

We've known for a long time that "Olde" Robert Selfe sailed from Wiltshire and paid the passage of six others to the New World. Naturally, these facts led Self researchers to believe that "Olde" Robert was born in Wiltshire. Thus, the search was concentrated in that area. If you're familiar with English Selfs who lived before 1600, you know that they were much like the Selfs who were born in America later on--they were obviously an adventurous, restless bunch, spreading themSelfs out into quite a few shires, especially in the Southern part of the country. Wiltshire was just one of the locations where the Self families lived--and it wasn't the home of the largest group, either.

Some pieces of the Wiltshire puzzle looked very promising. To begin with, while spelling was far from standardized in the early days, the Selfes of Wiltshire were fairly consistent--then as now-- in their use of the final "e" tacked onto their surname. The few documents pertaining to "Olde" Robert seemed to favor the spelling "Selfe" as well. Then there was the story of the "wealthy clothier" named Isaac Selfe who is associated with Beanacre. The given name "Isaac" runs through several lines of "Olde" Robert's descendants. But remember, Biblical names were favored in those times. You'll find lots of children named Isaac in other Southern families, too. Two other names that stand out in Wiltshire are "Edward" and "Caleb." We have a prominent Edward in the Kentucky Self line, one of the three troubled brothers who migrated from South Carolina--but he was born over a century after "Olde" Robert came to America. The name "Caleb" appears in our family not at all.

You may have heard the story about the baby, Robert Selfe, who was found in the Parish baptismal records in Wiltshire. This discovery happened some years ago. This child was just about the perfect age to be our "Olde" Robert, and he was introduced and accepted with a whole lot of fanfare. Not long afterward, a continued search of the records showed that this child died young. But to this day, some cousins still carry him in their gedcoms.

For a long time most of us listed two "Olde" Roberts in our family tree. An interpretation of early documents yielded "Olde" Robert and his "father" coming to America at about the same time. One was married to Mary; the other to Jane Makeing. A discussion between Cousins Virginia and Jim finally resolved the issue: there was just one "Olde" Robert, married twice. Jane, by the way, is probably Jane Bean. "Makeing" turns out to be a variant spelling of the word "making," and not a surname after all.

THE RESEARCH

We lack the time, finances, and health to visit Self homesteads in the United States let alone in England. But we've urged researchers who visit the United Kingdom to spend some time in London rather than viewing the same records in Wiltshire that have been scoured previously by others. We gave blanket encouragement in our 1998 article. And we did the same in replies to cousins who wrote to us and mentioned trips to England in their future. Cousin "California Bob" was the one who did just that, and we're forever grateful to him for discovering a link between our suspected family in London and "Olde" Robert Selfe. Because he still has more to do, we don't have the entire success story yet--but we'll let you know as soon as we receive another progress report.

WITH NINE, YOU GET ANCESTORS

We first took note of the Walter Selfe family in the Cripplegate section of London because of the startling correlation between the names of his children and the names of "Olde" Robert's children and grandchildren. Six out of nine names are the same, one of those being repeated in Walter Selfe's family, presumably because the first child bearing it died young. The baptisms of these children span 26 years. Walter's wife's name is unknown at this time, so we have no clue as to whether these names were used in her family or whether they went back farther into the generations of Selfdom.

WALTER SELF(E)
    He m. ---.
CHILDREN:
1.    John                 c. Dec.     9, 1582
2.    Thomasyne       c. Aug.   31, 1586
3.    Christian           c. July    17, 1588
4.    Lucy                 c. Nov. 23, 1589
5.    Henry               c. Apr.   17, 1603        d. young?
6.    Anne                c. June   17, 1604
7.    Robert           c. Mar. 9, 1605
8.    Henry            c. May    17, 1607
9.    Walter             c. Mar. 19, 1608

The names "John," "Robert," and "Christian" match those of "Olde" Robert's sons. "Christian" is especially significant because it's an unusual name for those times. You do see it, but not very often. It was the flag that caught our attention back in 1998. "Henry" is the name of "Olde" Robert's grandson through his son, Francis. Presumably "Olde" Robert's son, Stephen, named his own son, Walter, after his great-grandfather. "Walter" was another fairly uncommon name in the Biblical repository of the colonists.

When we first noticed this family, we thought perhaps that the Robert Self, b. 1605, was our "Olde" Robert. But apparently, he was TOO "olde" since our records say that "Olde" Robert was born about 1637. We searched our files diligently for a Robert, born in London, between 1635 and 1640 who could be our ancestor, but we couldn't find him there. Thanks to the work of "California Bob," as explained to me by Cousins David, Barry, and Andy in the Fall of 2006, we now know WHY "Olde" Robert has been so elusive. Robert Selfe (c. 1605) and his wife (name unknown) christened two children in London: Daughter, Margaret, in 1632, and son, Roboham, in 1630. Roboham is the original name of "Olde" Robert Selfe. What's more, we also had him in our files for years but never dreamed that these individuals were the same person.

We can't take credit for the entries in our English files, either. Much of our information is fragmented and taken from the Website of Cousin Douglas in England. He told me once that he didn't think anyone had much interest in the data he had collected. Little did any of us know that he held the key to the one mystery no one had ever been able to solve!

ONE GOOD MYSTERY DESERVES ANOTHER

Finding "Olde" Robert in England--if indeed, Roboham Selfe is "Olde" Robert--is a major accomplishment, once the ultimate goal of every Self researcher possibly descended from him. But this discovery is only the beginning. There are still more mysteries, more questions to be answered. Who was Walter Selfe? Did he always live in London, or did his own ancestors come from somewhere else in England? Did he have brothers and sisters? Where does he fit into the larger Self/Selfe family across the sea? How does he relate to the Selfs/Selfes transported to Australia? And what about Roboham's sister, Margaret? What happened to his aunts and uncles? What were the names of the mothers in these families? It's possible that one surname could have been Roboham or Robotham. Finally, what connection did Roboham's family have to the Selfes of Wiltshire?

Let's take Walter's children, one by one, and see what we can find in the London area. The following excerpts come from the collected fragments of Douglas Self. The hypotheses are ours:

JOHN SELFE

In looking for son John Selfe, c. 1582, we found a different John Self that might prove to be Walter Selfe's brother. Again, his wife's name is unknown. But he appears to be near Walter's age, having offspring born in the late 16th century. His two known children are Anne (c. Feb. 24, 1582) and Christyan (c. Nov. 12, 1587). These names match those of a daughter and son belonging to Walter.

THOMASYNE SELFE

We have no record of Thomasyne Selfe.

CHRISTIAN SELFE

We have no record of Christian Selfe.

LUCY SELFE

We have no record of Lucy Selfe.

ANNE SELFE

We have no record of Anne Selfe. As with Lucy, we looked for other possible families that had daughters with these names but could find nothing during that time period.

HENRY SELFE

We have no record of Henry Selfe.

WALTER SELFE, JR.

There is an entry for a younger Walter Selfe who may be the son of Walter, Senior. He also lived in London. His wife's name was Alice and he had at least two children: John (c1644) and Anne (c1648).

WALTER SELFE, SR.

Looking through our files slowly, it appears that the records for the Walter Selfe, Senior family is among the oldest ones we have. There is little, if anything, before 1550. So searching for the ancestors of Roboham's grandfather would have to involve records much older than those on Cousin Douglas's page. This search would probably best be started in London, in the Cripplegate District, since Walter may have had roots there. Obviously we base a lot of our hypotheses on given names--yet we need to remember that names such as "Henry" and "Anne" were extremely common in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries and are only as reliable as the other names that accompany them. Among later Selfs, there are a few similarities between Walter's family and the Selfes in Wiltshire--and even moreso with the Selfs in Suffolk. Norfolk, however, seems to have the greatest "sound" and "feel" of our Self/Selfe branch and the place most likely for Walter's descendants and those of his sibling(s) to go when they escaped the congestion of London. We'd be interested in learning about any more very early Self families in any English shire and any hypotheses on what their possible connections to Walter Selfe might be.

SUMMARY

It appears that through the diligent work of one special cousin, "Olde" Robert Selfe may have been identified. We're very happy to be part of the process through our early recognition of the Walter Selfe family of London. In retrospect, this discovery has been aided by many cousins who enabled tentative "trees" to be planted, diagrams which show in black and white the possible relationships to the past. Now the search for the Grail has been extended to locating the ancestors of Walter Selfe, Senior and delving back in time as far as recorded history will take us.

(NEXT: "Simpler Times")
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OBITUARY
MARTHA SELF LEWIS
contributed by Cousin Barry Self

LEWIS, MARTHA SELF, age 91 of 120 Lewis Lane, Tellico Plains, TN, widow of Fred T. Lewis, went to be with the Lord 7:45 p.m. Tuesday, November 14, 2006 at Sky Ridge Medical Center, Cleveland, TN. She was a member of Unicoi Baptist Church, Tellico Plains.

Survivors:
daughters and sons-in-law-Wilma and Benny Thomas- Benton, TN
                                            Annette and C.A. Stakely- Madisonville, TN
                                            Margaret Millsaps- Tellico Plains, TN
grandchildren and spouses- Michael Thomas and wife Karen,
                                             Devonda Thomas Firestone and husband Tim,
                                             Susan Stakely Bell and husband Kenny,
                                             Amy Thomas McMillian and husband Roy,
                                             Alison Millsaps Garrison;
great-grandchildren- Phillip Firestone,
                                  Ashley Thomas,
                                  Matthew Thomas,
                                  Allison McMillian;
sister- Edna Trotter- Athens, TN
brother- Calvin Self- Leeds, AL
several nieces and nephews

Funeral was 7:00 p.m. Thursday, November 16, 2006, Biereley-Hale Chapel, Rev. James Atkins officiated. Interment was 11:00 a.m. Friday, in Sunset Cemetery, Rev. Benny Thomas officiated. Pallbearers were Michael Thomas, Tim Firestone, Kenny Bell, Roy McMillian, Dennis Garrison, Phillip Firestone, Matthew Thomas. Family received friends 5-7 p.m. Thursday at Biereley-Hale Funeral Home, Tellico Plains, TN.

Martha Lewis was the daughter of George Washington Self and Eliza Percilla Lackey Self of Lumpkin County, GA. George W. Self was born 1877 and died in 1943. Eliza was born in 1881 and died in 1970. George and Eliza were married on January 30, 1902 in Lumpkin Co., GA. George W. Self was the son of John Calvin Self and Rebecca Seabolt Self, who were married on January 1, 1860 in Union Co., GA. John Calvin Self was the son of William Self and Mary Louisa Spencer Self. William Self was born ca. 1812. He died______. He and Mary Louisa married in ca. 1831. William later married a Rachel McCoy on 1866 in Union County, GA. William Self was a son to Job Presley Self and Sarah Julianna Jones Self I believe. (If anyone has genealogy that shows differently than what I have listed here, please let me know by writing to biereleyhalefh@compfxnet.com.)

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PLEASE CONTRIBUTE BIOGRAPHIES AND PHOTOS ===================================================================

MINOR SELF LINES
part 14
by Barbara Peck and Tim Seawolf-Self

In 2003, we presented an article on the major unconnected Self lines. Now we'd like to concentrate on the minor lines that are still not connected to Olde Robert Selfe, even by "best evidence." In this installment, we've included Self branches from South Carolina. We hope to feature more small family lines in the following newsletters.

SOUTH CAROLINA

SARAH JANE SELF: Who was Sarah Jane Self (1868-1950) who lived in Cherokee County? She married Josiah Scott Ruppe who was 4 years her junior. Did they have any children?

JOHN SELF: His parents were from SC also, but we don't know who they were. John and wife, Mary, lived in Darlington County with their three children, Ernest, Carrie, and Hattie.

JOHN M. SELF: Edgefield District was home to many early Self and allied surname families. John M. (1806) and Deanna (1812) Self were one couple who lived there. They had thirteen children: Chesley, Francis, James, Ransom, Sarah, Edwin, Thomas, Armistead, Mary, John, Jane, Susan, and Frances. While we have some incomplete information on son John, we have no idea what happened to the others.

NANNIE BRIEL SELF: Nannie Self lived in Greenville County, SC. She married Woodford R. Shelton and had three children: Minnie Bell, Sam, and Wood F., otherwise known as Jack. Who was she? And though we have marriages for the children, all three couples are "dead ends."

LEVY JACKSON SELF: We don't know if Levy's name is an alternative spelling of Levi or a name in itSelf. He doesn't appear to be closely related to any of the original Levi Self line. He married Annie Small in Lancaster County and had one son, Levy Jackson Self, Jr. (1895-1974)

WILLIAM R. SELF: One of two mysterious William Selfs, this one lived in Lancaster County, married to Catherine Nichols.

WILLIAM SELF: The other William Self also lived in Lancaster County. His wife was named Mary. He was born in 1835 of SC parents, probably very close to the birth year of William R. Self (above). His nine children: Thomas, George, John, Arminta, Stephen, Elizabeth, Nancy, Mary, and Martha.

WILLIAM P. SELF: Yet another William Self, this time from Spartanburg. He was born in 1848 and gave his parents' birthplace as SC, too. His wife's name was Charlotte, and she was the mother of Worth, Sarah, William, Mary, and an unknown male child born in 1879.

ELIZA L. SELF: Eliza L. Self was born in 1817. Her first husband had the surname Williams, and she had one child, B. F., by him. Her second husband was Henry Jefferson Bishop (1820-1888) of Spartanburg County, SC. This marriage produced seven children: Tusarah, Eliza Jane, Henry, John, Mary, Albertha, and Grover. We don't know what happened to son, John--but of the rest, son Grover was the only child to survive to a reasonably old age (73), dying in 1932.

J. WESLEY SELF: Another listing in the 1880 Census, we'd bet that the J. stands for "John." He was born in 1830, his wife, Elmira, being five years his junior. By 1880, they had five children: Alfred, Mary, S. Jane, James, and Ruth.

J. B. SELF: Pashie who died at slightly less than 2 months old--and her sister, Carrie who lived only a month, were the children of J. B. and Sallie Self of Spartanburg County, SC. Were there more children?

THOMAS M. SELF: An unknown, colorful character, Thomas M. Self was born 1812 in SC and died about 1880 in Hopkins County, TX. Supposedly he murdered Joseph Hall in Bibb County, GA in 1845, fled to MS and then went to TX. His wife was Mary Bridges, half Choctaw. Their eleven children were born between 1835 and 1861. Their names were William James, Elijah, Elizabeth, Henry, Mary, Sarah, Martha, Rebecca, Nancy, Frances, and Alice. Thomas's middle initial, "M," apparently stands for "Mason."

ROBERT J. SELF: Holmes County, MS is the place most usually associated with this Self family. But Robert J. Self was actually born 1826 in SC. His wife's name was T. Jane, maiden name unknown. There were four known children: Uriah, John, Willie, and Ellie Lee.

KATIE SELF: Katie Self had two husbands, the first named Raines and the second named Ellis. Eliza and Sarah C. Raines were two known daughters. Our files list Elizabeth Ellis--but we're not absolutely sure that she wasn't actually Eliza Raines. Not only is Eliza a nickname for Elizabeth (as well as a name in itSelf) but both Eliza and Elizabeth were married to men named Gentry.

(NEXT: Minor Self Lines, part 15)

Maybe your ancestors used to tell stories about life in the "old days," stories you remember hearing as a child. Please tell us about them. We will even supply editing and formatting; but we'd all love to know about daily life in the Self families of old--and you may be able to help. Please contact us. And please state that your story is specifically for the newsletter.

LOOSE ENDS

Please go to our "Loose Ends" subsection at our SelfSite at RootsWeb.

DEAD ENDS

Please go to our "Dead Ends" subsection at our SelfSite at RootsWeb.

SELFS IN SPACE

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