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my family genealogy work...

This is a work in progress so check back for updates.

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Welcome to my site presenting my genealogy work. My new domain hopefully won't be confused with The Religious Society of Free Quakers site. Although a traceable connection to their group probably exists for me I haven't delved that deeply into that aspect of my ancestry.

I'm working on updating this site, moving (or actually duplicating the two with freequaker.org ) so please pardon its coarse state. I'm incorporating it into to a content management system at this domain but am unable to use this CMS with the other since it's on a more basic hosting plan. (I still could but everything is DIY on the other hosting. I'd have to set up the "backend" software but I'm not quite that ambitious at this point.)

This is about the best backgroud info on the early Quakers in general: What makes a Quaker by: Daniel González Franco

I'd also like to clarify a point that could be of contention, and that is the basic tenet of Society of Friends (Quakers) being historically pacifists. The Quakers didn't really form until shortly before some migrated to North America. They were being persecuted & the simplest way to explain why is that they were caught in the middle between Catholics & Protestants, trying to be peacemakers, but then those in the colonies ended up in similar situation. Some managed to stay out of the Revolutionary War & may have found themselves involved in the Civil War as Union ← and I mention that because there's an old movie on that topic, it's hokey as hell (but I digress).

In any event, violence begets violence, and people can end up in a vicious cycle of retaliations, kinda like Hatfields & McCoys. There is another aspect that is known, people are not stupid, and we know that people can tend to be arbitrary & biased, so in civil society we have laws that deal with specific types of crimes. There are agreed upon punishments for people convicted of violating laws in whatever predetermined category the law is in, and all that entails as part of our country's justice system. The Quakers got involved with taking up arms in the wars because at that time it became necessary for them to do so, obviously. The point is that violence is almost impossible to completely avoid in this world, and to what degree can depend upon socioeconomic factors. Violence committed by an individual citizen against another citizen may be criminal, but there is of course self-defense situations. An average citizen may be confronted with circumstances to where they feel like committing a violent act against another but may also understand that it's unnecessary because they're not being directly threatened with violence towards them. The other person may even be in a vulnerable position; let's say a burglar is hiding in bushes after being chased out of a house and he has no weapon, the normal thing to do is call police and watch to see if he tries to run off.

Now of course a burglar that would get caught that easily isn't too smart. There would be a point to ridicule him on social media when the news story is posted. It is often those kind of social media posts that will draw out the people who insist that they just would have killed him... or just beat him up (let's go with that for now ... I kinda jumped ahead). So since this website is still about Quakers (that part hadn't changed) and the subtopic here is their pacifism, there is still much reason to refrain from even speaking or writing about the desire to commit some violent act. If the examplar burglar is a white man then people may figure that since he's white the mere commenting about violence toward him is harmless ... people commenting thus are just joking, or whatever. The problem is that there exists a culture that persisted from the Antebellum South that were raised to understand the Quaker posit, emulating it even (by acting compassionate), and if there is talk of violence toward a white man (for example) then they'll agree, but with the added condition that the violence would be escalated if the person were of color. The original statement that was about violence toward some person as means of punishment (vigilantism) will become a discussion about race, more specifically that there's the existing posit that some people are inferior to others based on skin color. So discussing violence in any capacity can be a slippery slope and sets a bad example.

In sociology there's the concept of disproportionate, meaning that oftentimes when left up to unregulated society the punishments will be arbitrary and can quickly become extreme the more people that get involved with determining it and administering it. Currently, one of the best examples of that in our real world is the practice of charging minors as adults for crimes. Science tells us that a person's brain (frontal cortex) doesn't fully develop until twenty-five, but a person desires independence years before that so there was compromise made, an explanation for purposes here. The idea that a sixteen year old would be fully aware and comprehend the possible consequences for some (usually gun related) crime is not reasonable since the expectation then is that the minor has spent their pre-adolescent years following the news. Along similar lines, as related to crime and consequences for the perpetrator in our country, Quakers are (supposed to be) united in agreement that capital punishment needs to be abolished. It is disproportionately applied to people of color and there is no way that would be changed, and the fact that it's actually used reveals that it isn't a deterrent. It is state sanctioned revenge, and again, it cannot be applied with any amount of equality due to copious factors. In combination with secular anthropomorphism the overall message to younger people is that humans have less right than animals do. Any aberrancies a human exibits is considered as evidence of inferiority. The bias is reinforced with the theory of evolution, which is accepted as fact, and so much so that if remains of a group of ancient humans are found that are deformed and shorter than average stature then they're immediately classified separately than us. It is never considered that they may have been an outcasted, inbred clan. (I'm a creationalist, incidently, but that is something that I can rarely mention.)

Note: I ended up uncovering a Munchausen syndrome by proxy case where a young woman's life was destroyed. Her mother worked for HUD as an equal rights specialist (ironic, to say the least). The woman's supervisor threatened to contact "Federal Protection Services" to have me investigated for "cyberstalking" (seriously!) because of the website that I set up to commemorate the victim and document her suffering.

Updated content: I found out that my paternal great-grandfather, Davis Sherman Hughes, was a bigamist. He was still legally married to my great-grandmother (who became hospitalized) when he got married and had a daughter with another woman. Click here to skip down this page to the associated images of documents. (That link won't work yet.)

This page displays the family genealogy record & other related miscellaneous documents (and a few photographs) that I have aquired. I have converted the scanned pages into plain text format. (note 2nd column pg 6 of the converted text on this page) (Those links won't work yet.)

There's a short video of an interview with my great(x2) uncle, Robert B McCurdy, and on my YouTube channel I have some of it transcribed (he's difficult to hear): 1993 interview with Robert B McCurdy.

Here's my 3rd-great-grandfather, William Davis Hughes from an established genealogist's site (that is now defunct). (I've downloaded the entire section that includes William's entry and uploaded it to my web hosting.) I have located a copy of the death certificate for his younger brother, Lewis Marion, which lists the brothers' parents.

On the various online genealogy databases the descendancy of William D. Hughes from the Free Quaker, Lt Jonathan Hughes, has been established. (I noticed some discrepancy among the databases with the year of Jonathan's death. I will research that more.) Jonathan Hughes (1753-1845) > Anderson Hamilton Hughes > William Harrison Hughes > William D. Hughes

I have a cover index page for the section David Attride's genealogy record database that I have uploaded to my site and I've also added some other informative links on that page.

There is another online source listing William Harrison and Christina Cress with 11 children beginning with George Henry: HUGHES-L Williamn H. Hughes, Ohio/Michigan, etc. ABT 1900 forward | John Ley on rootsweb.com

Below is an excerpt from page 81 - History of Delaware: General History - John Thomas Scharf where William Parsons Hewes, my great(x7) grandfather (& grandfather to Lt Jonathan Hughes), is listed as one of the jurors that was called (by William Penn) to serve on the first jury convened for a criminal trial in Colonial America.

Other Sordid Details

So it turns out, my great-grandfather, "Sherman" (Davis Sherman Hughes), was officially a bigamist. My great-grandmother's death certificate that was issued from the central hospital (first image below) has her married to him (still) but he had a daughter in high school with his wife, Naomi F. Sheets, when my great-grandmother passed away in 1950.