- Corned Beef and Cabbage
One of the greatest pleasures I receive from posting my daily blogs are the responses from readers. Very often they expand upon something I’ve mentioned or gently correct me if I happen to have mis-spoke myself. My neighbor Tucker did just that yesterday. He said that I had missed his great- grandmother, Elizabeth Wachsmuth, when I wrote of the Irish natives shown on Oysterville’s 1870 census. And, indeed I had!
Not only that, it is by searching back through Elizabeth Josephine (Sullivan) Wachsmuth’s line that Tucker can show that we are related. We have an Espy as a common ancestor! I’ve known for awhile that there are Espys in Tucker’s background but I don’t think the penny had ever dropped that one of his Espy line actually lived here in Oysterville.
I took another (closer) look at the 1870 census and there she was: Lizzie Wachsmuth, age 20, born in Ireland and married to Meinert Wachsmuth. Their house was across the street from the house where we live now, so when my grandparents moved here in 1902, Lizzie and Meinert were their across-the-street neighbors.
Unfortunately, Lizzie died three years later, perhaps before my shy grandmother, just half Lizzie’s age (I’m sure she called her “Mrs. Wachsmuth”), was able to become very well acquainted with her. Our family correspondence often mentions Meinert (“Mr. Wachsmuth”) and his daughter Tena who looked after him for the next nineteen years, but not Lizzie
Tucker also reminded me that three generations of Espys were born in Ireland between 1670 to 1725. The family had moved from Scotland to County Antrim in the Province of Ulster, Ireland. Among the surnames of the lasses the Espy men married were Mitchell, Taylor, and Montgomery but whether they were true Irish colleens, I don’t know,
How interesting that two different branches of those Scottish/Irish Espys ended up in Oysterville in the 1800s! I wonder if Lizzie and my grandfather Harry or great-grandfather Robert ever talked about their common ancestry – or even knew about it.
It looks as though you did have a grand time and good food, too!
Hey, Happy (slightly delayed well wishing) St Paddy’s Day. I had no idea of those Irish connections of Espy family. Seems so strange to think of this young Irish girl waltzing around the Oysterville, but I love the thought of it. I’m sure with Lizzie’s Irish brogue Harry and Robert were aware of her heritage. Everybody wants to know where everybody else if “from.” Now I have to go back and read your St. Paddy’s Day daybook.
P.P.S. Tucker says I still have our common heritage confused. (I’m definitely at two with genealogy!) He says we are not related through his great-grandmother at all, but through his mother! Our common ancestor is Josiah Espy born in 1670 in Ireland. No doubt I’ll forget the details again but maybe I’ll remember the Irish part, at least until next Saint Patrick’s Day!