The Dunsford Family: A Long Line of "Mediocrity"

The Dunsford family was "remarkable for a long mediocrity of station in the useful employments of life" according to Martin Dunsford (1744-1807). He wrote about the family in his Memoirs of the Family of Dunsford. Like that author, I can trace my Dunsfords back to the small town of Bradninch, in Devon, England, UK.

I have yet to get my hands on a copy of Martin Dunsford's manuscript, but I assume I am a cousin of Martin's. My most direct Dunsford ancestor, my grandmother Margaret Emily Dunsford, was born in St. Louis in 1897. Before she married, she was a forewoman at the Wallace Pencil Company in Maplewood, St. Louis County, Missouri. The building, which bears the company name, is still there, right across from the Maplewood Commons on S. Hanley Road. My grandfather, George Alexander Kienlen, Jr., was a foreman on a different floor of the building. According to my dad, Margaret quit her job once she married.

Margaret's father was James "Harry" Dunsford. He was also born in St. Louis, in 1876. He was a painter, or "whitener." He owned his own business, along with one of his half-brothers. They were poor, but hard-working.  

John Dunsford, the father of Harry, was also a whitener. He was born in Clifton, Bristol, Devon in 1846. He immigrated with his family in 1851. His mother and sisters vanished, which is a mystery I have yet to solve, but his father, John Dunsford, remarried and left a large Dunsford line in St. Louis, Missouri. 

John Dunsford, the father, was baptized in the small town of Cullompton, Devon, around 1820. He was employed as a rope maker in Devon, and also in St. Louis after his arrival. 

John's father, also named John, was a paper maker. This John was born around 1780 and was baptized at Clyst Hydon, Devon. Paper making was a huge industry in Devon. (Note: I found a book a few years ago at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City specifically about paper making in Devon. I recommend reading it if you have any paper making ancestors. I had no idea about the process, and I found it to be very interesting.) 

William Dunsford was the father of John the paper maker. From what I have found so far, he was a carpenter, as were several of his sons. According to my Ancestry.com hints, his father may have been Benjamin Dunsford of Bradninch. This is probably true, but I have yet to prove that definitively. The Bradninch parish records (St. Disens, pictured above - photo from the church website) are not online, except for an index. I'm holding out for the originals. I'm planning to visit Devon this summer, and I can't wait to visit Bradninch and the other towns where my Dunsford and associated ancestors lived.

 It seems our family has continued on with the Dunsford mediocrity, and I'm okay with that. It's people like us who make the world work!

Family Photos and Happiness

Before you ask, I missed Week 1. The theme was "Fresh Start," and somehow it got away from me. I absolutely could not let this week's theme slip by unfinished. 

My dad was a photographer, as I have mentioned before. He provided lots of favorites to our family photo collection. Most of them are pictures of our family.  We traveled a lot, and there are some great ones!

He also took pictures for his job at Ralston Purina Company. After he died, they became part of our family story - some more than others. My favorite example is a picture he took of some piglets. I think they were suckling, but they were all lined up, lying on their sides. There were 7 piglets, and it was a fairly large photo on foam board. 

When my sister and her husband moved into my parents house, my brother-in-law wanted to take down the photo of me and my sisters taken in the 1980s which had been proudly hung over their piano for about 30 years. It was kind of a sad day, because we didn't know what to do with it. We couldn't think of anyone who loved all three of us enough to display it, so we considered sending to our cousin Chris as a joke. In true Kienlen spirit, we turned that sad realization into a fun memory.  We wrote the names of our children (my dad's 7 grandchildren) on the pigs and hung it in its rightful place over the piano.

Somehow it seems appropriate to choose a photo of my dad as my current favorite. He was probably about 3, so I guess this was taken in the summer of 1936 or 1937. They lived either in Maplewood (St. Louis County) or St. Louis City at this point, but they could have been visiting friends.

Dad had a cute little outfit on, and a big smile on his face. It is clearly summer, and there are plants growing behind him. Maybe they were tomatoes or roses, his two favorite things to grow. George and Margaret Kienlen weren't rich, and I'm sure they couldn't give him everything they wanted to, but it looks like he was happy.

Dad once told me a story about a time he and his mom went to the Muny (St. Louis Municipal Opera - an outdoor, summer venue for mostly musicals). They took the streetcar and it started raining. The show was cancelled, and it took them a long time to get home. They were completely drenched by the time they made it. Instead of being wet and miserable, his mom (Margaret Emily Dunsford Kienlen) laughed and laughed about it. He said his mom's reaction made quite an impression on him, and, fortunately for us, he passed that optimism on down the line. His sweet, smiling face in this photo is a great reminder to look for the joy around us.  Maybe that's why he liked taking pictures. People are usually smiling. They are usually happy or doing fun things. What a great job that must have been, even if pigs can't smile.

So, here's a challenge for anyone reading this. You always have a choice. You can be angry or upset, or you can turn it around. I would love to hear comments about a time you did this, because it feels great to read positive things. Here's mine:

Last weekend my 5 year old granddaughter spilled about 1/4 of a bag of chocolate chips. She looked at me and had a complete look of shock and maybe a little fear on her face. I looked at her and said, "Rose! Now you're going to have to eat all of those!" I've never seen a kid so happy! She didn't eat lunch, but neither of us cared. 

Creating a Future to Discover the Past

"The future is not something we enter. The future is something we create."—Leonard I. Sweet

This week's blog topic is Future. I think about the future a lot, but especially at this time of the year.

It's not what you think. I don't get all sentimental at the holidays or anything like that. I just hate winter. I hate the cold. I hate being cooped up inside. I hate wearing shoes and socks all the time. 

You see, this is the time I think about the summer. I go through seed catalogs and plan my garden. I look at calendars of spring and summer festivals in the area to visit with my grandchildren. I plan my summer vacation.

More and more, my summer plans have included visits to places where my ancestors lived. I want to know how and why, if possible, they left their homes in other places and how I came to live in Missouri. What influenced their decisions? Were they looking for better opportunities? Were they running from some type of misfortune? Were they adventurers?

The first real research trip I made was to Tennessee. I visited the Tennessee State Library and Archives in Nashville and dug up a few things. Then I drove around the state to a few courthouses, churches, and cemeteries. It was all pretty uneventful until I went to Obion County, Tennessee to a small town called Hornbeak. After meeting a man who lived next to the church and knew of my ancestor, I was hooked!

Since that time I have taken a few trips, but the one the summer of 2020 will be the best yet.
I know it will require a lot of planning and a lot of research, but it's the trip of a lifetime. I want to do it right.

I'm going create my future, my 2020, to make it as genealogically fruitful and as emotionally rewarding as possible.

My daughter Jen and I are going first to Paris. I've never been, but some of my ancestors were there. One, Nicolas Hébert, was an apothecary and may have been associated with Catherine de' Medici, Queen of France. She supposedly had cabinets of poisons. Did she get them from him? She was also known to have met with Nostradamus. Did my ancestor know him too? I need to know more!

There are other ancestors who lived in the Paris vicinity. I want to learn and see as much as I can, and advance research is so important.

Fortunately for us, my daughter speaks and reads French. While she's busy diving into French history, I'll be working on another family line. We are going to leave Paris after a few days and take a ferry from Calais to Dover and see the White Cliffs of Dover as they are meant to be seen - from the water.

Then we are going to travel across southern England, seeing the sights until we arrive in Devon, England. Our Dunsford, Ware, and associated ancestors lived in many of the small towns in the middle of Devon. They were commoners - gardeners, paper makers, rope makers. I want to learn more about their lives and visit the places they frequented. I am just as excited about these families. We're going to get to stay in some country manor houses, even one with a thatched roof (Thanks, AirBnb!). We will look out over the moors at the beauty of England, and, of course, go to Cornwall - Sidenote: If you haven't watched Poldark, you need to watch it. Cornwall is amazingly beautiful. 

I hope all of you are planning a 2020 as great as I hope mine will be.

Happy New Year!

Here's to the future!

P.S. You should all check out the great prices on Norwegian Airlines, which made this trip possible.