My father was Vernon, his Louis, then Levi, and finally Samuel. And that was about as far as we could go in tracing the family.
My grandmother was known to have done some exploring, but supposedly when she learned that some parts of the family may have been "Scottish Pirates" she dropped it. She didn't want to dig too far, I suppose, in fear of actually finding out more than she wanted to know.
There were rumors and intimations that John may have been Samuel's father but no proof. My middle son, Louis, had also done some searching using a variety of methods, including Ancestry.com. As genealogists often lament, we couldn't get "across the pond" to find out from where the family emigrated.
Until today!
A cousin from down the Fred Gill line (my grandfather was Louis, a brother to Fred - we're all related to Levi), Linda Gill called the other day saying she had read some of the information I had written and published in the Daunt to Dillonwood column in the Recorder. She was traveling in Ohio, not far from the town of Circleville, where our Great-Grandfather Levi lived, married, then emigrated to California.
She called to get a little more information explaining she was nearby, and might as well go into the community and see what she could learn. I gave her everything I thought she might like to have in a rush of information. When we finished, she said she was "...38 miles from Circleville." She later laughed that they had intended to be in Circleville a few hours, and ended up staying two nights.
In her searching information in Circleville, she did confirm that Samuel's father was indeed John, but still couldn't get any link to Scotland, Ireland, or any other place for that matter. But by confirming John as being in our chain of family, she opened some doors.
In a series of excited calls this morning, Louis finally found the link "across the pond." But it was not to any place we had expected. It turns out that John's father was Edmund, and Edmund was born in 1680 in the northern part of the Isle of Man. That would make him my Great-Great-Great-Great-Grandfather.
So, it turns out that the Gills emanate from a little rock in the middle of the Irish Sea, nearly equidistant from England, Scotland, and Ireland. IOM, as it is referred to in most of the Genealogy listings, is not governed by any of the three, but is their own entity.
Like the folks on the TV show "Who Do You Think You Are?" this info had to be dug up. If it were not for Linda going to Circleville, searching out the proof that John Gill was indeed the the father of Samuel, Lou would probably not have found the definitive link to Edmund. It is fun to finally get enough information to actually be able to track our ancestors back to where they were living when they emigrated to America.
In fact, we found they lived in the Lezayre province, near the town of Sulby roughly five miles inland from the port of Ramsey on the northeast coast. Digging around on one of the web sites, I also found the John Gill family emigrated through New York on June 28, 1831, having sailed on the ship Meridian.
Apparently my Great-Great-Grandfather Samuel and his wife Isabella had already emigrated and settled in Circleville, Ohio. When his parents, John and Isabella, and the rest of the family arrived in America, they settled around Warrensville, Ohio. Today, it is apparently known as Warrensville Heights, and is a suburb of Cleveland, some 170 miles north of Circleville.
A search for Warrensville simply brought up a main road in Cleveland, Warrensville Center Road. I enlarged that map and poked along up and down that road until I found an area, presumably a suburb name, that was Warrenville Heights. So apparently when it became a part of the city of Cleveland, the name was changed a bit.
The interesting part of all this is that much has to be assumed, though many different things can be proven. Still, it is exciting to know that the Isle of Man was home to the ancestors, and that the Gill clan is neither Scottish, nor Irish, nor British. Instead we are Manx, the name given to residents of the island.
And, yes, the Manx cat, the flat-rump, tailless cat, was a breed originated there too.
