Tuesday, September 25, 2007

More Land Records



Both brothers, Alexander B. Sanchez and George W. Sanchez, received Military Bound land from the U.S. government.

The one on the right is for George W. Sanchez. I copied the original (primary source) document. I found it at the P.K. Yonge Library of Florida History, Gainesville, FL [UF Campus]; Manuscript Collection, call# 99,028, Sanchez Family Papers, folio 22. It was in a box of papers 99.9% dealing with the lawyer E.C.F. Sanchez and his brothers in St. Augustine. The document is held together with some old cellophane tape.

Posting Alexander B. Sanchez' recorded Military Bounty Land grant here would just show an illegible document. Alexander Sanchez recorded his land grant in the Alachua County, Deed Record Book E, page 124 on 14 Jan 1860. You can see it [and copy it] online at the Alachua Ancient Records website, "Deed Record E" on page "124". Alexander Sanchez created a secondary document that is recorded as a legal document.

The U.S. government begrudgingly gave these land grants to the volunteer militias in the Second Seminole War that were not paid for their service.

There is a trick here. If you look closely, you will see a frequently exercised feature of the bounty land grant. The answer will be in the comments.

Los Floridanos Activities

This is from a September Newsletter email notice:

Los Floridanos Society, Inc
Florida’s First Spanish Families 1565-1763
P. O. Box 1891
St. Augustine, FL 32085-1891
WWW.Losfloridanos.org

Sanchez
Solana

NEWSLETTER
SEPTEMBER 2007

August meeting was well attended with twelve members and guests. Family histories were discussed; Wayne Solana provided a copy of his family history prepared by Eleanor Barnes in 1968. Dick Rousseau provided a copy of the City of St. Augustine’s City Court record dated December 13, 1877 that listed a CM Solana charged for disorderly conduct and fined $6.25 by Mayor Thos. F. House.

Plans were discussed for the upcoming picnic which will be held on Saturday, October 20, 2007 at Matanzas Park. Barbara Colee volunteered to help with the table sales. Members are encouraged to bring small picnic tables and chairs. The Society will provide the meat and drinks and the members will bring other food. Anita will mail a reminder notice.

UPCOMING ACTIVITIES


SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 1, 2007; 9:30 AM

Society Members and guests will attend the 2007 Reenactment of the Landing of Pedro Menendez celebrating St. Augustine’s 442nd birthday at the Mission of Nombre De Dios. We will be seated in a designated area in front of the lectern.

Solemn Mass will be celebrated at the conclusion.

SATURDAY OCTOBER 20, 2007; NOON

Los Floridanos member and guest picnic at Matanzas Park


SATURDAY NOVEMBER 10, 2007; NOON

Seventh anniversary luncheon meeting will be held at a local restaurant; details to come later. City of St. Augustine Commissioner George Gardner has promised to attend and speak on the topic of the first Spanish Period families.

SATURDAY DECEMBER 8, 2007 9 AM; IHOP RESTAURANT US #1
& SR #16; ST. AUGUSTINE, FL.

Christmas breakfast for members and guests; Tom Graham, PhD will speak on the subject of Flagler’s Hotels in St. Augustine.

MEMBERSHIP INFORMATION

Annual member dues are $ 15 for year 1/1/07-12/31/07. Dues are prorated 50% after July 1, 2007. Please complete the following form and bring it with you to the meeting or forward to the Society address above with your membership dues. Contact 904-797-4952 for further information.

Name:
Address:
City/State/Zip:
Phone/E-mail:
Ancestral Family Name: _____________________________
There are a number of activities that have already happened and more that will be happening in St. Augustine.

Because of travel distance, I can't make it to most of the meetings, but hope to make it ot the picnic in October and hope to see you there.

Monday, September 24, 2007

Tutorial on Blogging

I though all my cousins had ideas, discoveries, opinions and the like.

A blog is a cross between a website and email. You go and check on it like a website, but unlike a website you can contribute to it with things that look like emails. The messages have standard features like font choices, bold, italic, color print, linking to a website, text alignments, lists both numbered and bulleted, quoted texts, a spell checker, adding pictures and videos, and undoing most of what I just listed. If you know HTML, you can do more but that isn't necessary.

After you compose a message you post it and if you see and error you can correct it [I know that feature well.]

I help with the blog at my local genealogical society and prepared a tutorial for them:
http://www.rootsweb.com/~flpcgs/Blog-Ed/Blog-Ed.htm
The adding a link is the hardest feature for me. Adding pictures is easy and writing is good with a spell checker.

I sent out a bunch of invitations to join the blog. Your cousins might like to hear what you have to tell them. If your invitation is lost or expired, or I some how missed you, let me know I can send you a fresh one.

Saturday, September 22, 2007

Introduction

Hi,

thank you so much for inviting me here. I have looked over most areas and find this very interesting. I am especially pleased to see some photographs of the siblings of my great, great, great grandmother, Margaret P. Sanchez.

My late aunt Anna had an old photo of Margaret P. Sanchez who married her great grandfather, Woodbridge Sage Olmsted. I don't know what happened to it but I will attempt to talk my cousins into sharing (assuming they have it).

On your page showing the descendants of Francisco Sanchez there is listed my great grandmother, Anna Olmsted.

I would like to offer here some additional information about the Olmsted descendants of Francisco Roman Sanchez.

Margaret P. Sanchez married Woodbridge Sage Olmsted who came from a large old Connecticut Yankee family. As your genealogy shows, they had many children. My great great grandfather, Henry Martyn Olmsted was one. He worked as a machinist and manager at the Morse Twist Drill Co. of New Bedford Mass. Henry M. Olmsted married Anna Robbins, the daughter of Eliphalet H. Robbins (a Capt. in the 3rd Mass Cavalry) and Anna Lucas Chase (dtr of a sea captain lost off Australia). Anna Robbins died after the couple's second child and Henry Martyn Olmsted never remarried.

Their first child Margaret who was known to us as aunt Maud. She married sometime around 1900 but never had children. Her husband was a vet of the Spanish American War. Their second Child was Anna Willis Olmsted. She was born around 1872 in New Bedford MA. She attended Welesly College and became a school teacher and midwife. She married John Anderson Phinney around 1898. They had 6 children:

Margaret Eunice Phinney b. 1899 Harwich MA d. March 1967 Hyannis MA.
Marion Phinney b. 1901 d. 1969.
Henry d. 1943 (actually he disappeared presumed drowned off Chatham MA)
Frank
Priscilla d. around 1990
Anna b. 1914 d. 2002.

All six had children, my grandmother Margaret had five children and twenty-nine grandchildren and altogether probably has around 100 living descendants. Too many to list here and I don't recall half of them off the top of my head.

All five of her younger siblings had some children.

Amongst the descendants of Anna Willis Olmsted
now or recently living were:

a captain of the U.S. Navy
a judge in North Carolina
a librarian at the Boston Public Library
two Navy seals
several school teachers
comptroller of a major Boston university
a Fulbright Scholar
a dentist
several artists
several merchants.

Growing up my father used to joke about how he would tan darker than my Irish mother. He would always say it was the Spanish in him. In actuality, he was not terribly dark. His New England Yankee blood had diluted the Spanish down quite a bit. It was this and nothing else, until I was well into my adult years that made up the sum total knowledge that I had about my Sanchez ancestors. Then about 15 years ago, while helping my mother clean out her house I came upon some papers that had once belonged to my grandmother which showed our descent from Francis Roman Sanchez. It seemed that my grandmother had done some genealogical research in the 1950s. About ten years ago I came upon Double Cousins and that added to my knowledge. I am so glad to see distant cousins and others have added to what we know and certainly to what I know about the Sanchez family.

When I get my new box of wires, er, computer, I will scan some pics of the family. I have Pictures of Henry Martyn Olmsted, His two daughters and other descendants. I will only be posting people who are deceased unless I get permission otherwise. I know some people do not like their pics on the net. I even have some early twentieth century pics of some of my relatives visiting Florida. Hopefully I can gain access to the photo of Margaret P. Sanchez.

By the way, my aunt Anna thought that the P. in Margaret P. Sanchez stood for Ponchetta but we never saw a document to confirm this. Is this a correct guess?

David Bartlett