Sunday's Obituary-George C. VanBilliard

George is my Great Granfather. I found this on Roots Web on Friday night. I have been looking for his death information for 3 years, after I had discovered that I had the incorrect date. He has been found!



George C. Van Billiard



George C. Van Billiard, of North Brookfield, NY, a former resident of Bethlehem, died at his home.

He was born in Freemansburg, on 16th July, 1864, a son of the late Jerome & Ellen Van Billiard, he was 66 years old.

There survive 3 sons, Luther, of Bethlehem, Robert & Raymond, both of Philadelphia; 4 daughters, Mrs. Edward Leidig & Mrs. W.A. Martin, both of Bethlehem, Mrs. David O'Donnell & Mrs. Walter Fellman, both of Philadelphia; Mrs. Newton Bast and Mrs. John Acker, both of Bethlehem; 14 grandchildren & 1 great-grandchild.



Easton Express
Easton, PA
Wednesday, 12th November, 1930
page 5
respository: Name: personal Papers/RGW

I do not know who the last two women, Mrs. Newton Bast and Mrs. John Acker, are since the relationship is not given. But I will try to find out.

Thriller Thursday-Sad Case of Poisoning

This is a story about the family of my 2nd Great Grand Uncle, Oliver VanBilliard. The Daily Times of Bethlehem, PA reported on 18 May 1868 that the family had recently moved to another part of Freemansburg. And that the groceries were still mixed up from the move. When Mrs. VanBilliard decided to bake on the Saturday before the 18th, she accidently used rat poison instead of baking soda, "using a good teaspoonful" when baking a cake. When one of the children was hungry she gave them some cake and then had some herself and then fed the baby and all three bacame "violently attacked with nausea". After being treated with "powerful emetics" they were recovering. It was rumored that Mr VanBilliard had purchased a package of soda in a drug store at Bethlehem and had received the poison by mistake. He said this was untrue and he would certify it.

The next day, in "Recovering", the Daily Times said that "the unfortunate ones" were doing much better thanks to their physicians. They said it "may take several months until Mrs. VanBilliard is perfectly restored, she having been attacked the most violently".

Fall and Indian Summer

This all started when I was going to make a comment about the beautiful weather today. I wanted to say that it feels like Fall is really here but there is still Indian Summer to watch out for.

I stopped at that point and thought about these days of "Political Correctness" and not wanting to offend anyone, thought I would look up the phrase and its origin. While I have no Native American ancestors that I have found as yet, my first husband, the father of my children, always claimed that there was an Indian Princess in his direct line. I have not been able to find this in my search of his line. I know if he were still with us he would be as upset with me as his mother was when my daughter told her. When I told one of my sons about this discovery, or lack of discovery, he said that the Native American Heritage was so much a part of his father that he would be upset that I cannot find it. I know this is so true.

Well I have gone off on my side rant. I was talking a couple of weeks ago to this same son. I was telling him some family history and stories that I thought, as always that he already knew, but he said he had never knew. He started to laugh and said that I can take a conversation into so many directions. I never thought about how I do that and the vision of diagraming sentences in grade school suddenly came to me. Now that I have thought about that I blame my Irish/British Isles heritage,have you ever seen "Ducky" on "NCIS"?

End another side rant and now getting to what I found out about the origin of "Indian Summer". I found this on phrases.org.uk It is first recorded in "Letters from an American Farmer" in 1778. "It began to be used figuratively to refer to any late flowering following a period of decline" The official meaning is "an unseasonably warm, dry and calm weather, usually following a period of colder weather or frost in the late Autumn" They give a few of the commonly repeated guesses as to why it is call Indian Summer. The one I like is "When European settlers first came across the phenomenon in America it bacame know as the Indian's Summer."

Wedding Wednesday-George and Cass(McCarry)Odonnell

My Mom and Dad outside church, 14 October 1950

Wordless Wednesday-Happy Birthday Mom

Surname Saturday-Gunther

Thomas Emil Gunther

Thomas is one of my maternal Great Grandfathers. Growing up hearing the stories about him my Nana only called him Emil,. I did not find out until much later that his name was Thomas Emil. I found this from my cousin who also had his birth date of 3 September 1861. I always knew that he had come from Germany. that he had come alone as a young man. I know that he married Catherine McCarron and had three daughters, Helen, 5 June 1895, 25 April 1899 and Theresa, 31 May 1905. All born in Philadelphia, PA. Then a few years ago a friend of my mother's made a comment that Helen was my grandmother's half sister. I know nothing of this. So I requested Aunt Helen's death certificate. She lived in New York so I had a new learning experience in getting this information. I needed to know exactly were she died in order to get this. Thank goodness my family has kept prayer cards from just about everyone's death. On Aunt Helen's I found the name and address of the funeral home and went from there. After a few letters back and forth I received the death certificate for Helen (Gunther) Natale. With her husband, Louis, as informant, it listed her mother's maiden name as Catherine Gunther and her father as Emil Carrigan and her birthplace as U.S.A. New York. So another lesson in information from Death Certificates, Uncle Louie had reversed the last names. But who is Catherine Carrigan? Just some more mystery added to Emil Gunther. I hope to have more information soon. I will keep you posted!

Sisters

My Little Sister, Terry

Terry was born 12 August 1955 and I was 4 that December, so when we were growing up she could be the little tag along pain that little sisters can be. But she was always, my sister. Because of the age difference, I was graduated high school the June before she started. She was the type of personality the did anything she set her mind to do. She played the Base in the school orchestra all 4 years. When she graduated she joined the Air Force and went on to great things there. She was stationed in Berlin for 3 years. had a story written about her in Stars and Stripes because she was one of the first women in her field. She left the Air Force when she married and was starting a family. She continued to work first on ships at the Philadelphia Navy Yard and then with private corporations with military contracts. She had 4 children, 3 girls and 1 boy. When my husband died in 2001 she kind of took me on as a project and I guess we became closer than we had ever been as adults. then she was having some problems and then it was found that she had cancer. she took that on like she did everything else. And she was doing all the things she wanted to get done. She did a bit of traveling and she and I did lots together, including some of the traveling. This picture was taken on our trip to Ireland in Oct 2004. This was on top of Blarney Castle. She walked to the top but because of her condition she could not go through the chore of kissing the stone. But the people at the stone were kind enough to let her bear"Bruce" kiss the stone for her. She died 1 Sept 2005, just after her 50th birthday and just after she found out that she was going to be a grandmother for the first time. I was going to put a picture of her stone, but I wanted to show how much life she had and when she was having fun! Happy Birthday to my Little Sister