Allan Ralph Andrews, born September 13th 1939, Long
Beach California, St. Mary’s Hospital, 4:03 AM, father
Ralph B. Andrews, mother, Jean Thompson Andrews,
now remarried as Jean Colaluca.
In an attempt to trace the ancestors of my mother, Jean
Thompson Andrews, born Jean Thompson, of Hugh
Monroe Thompson, father, and Mary Lingenfelter
Thompson, mother, discovered links to the Pyle family
tree through the parents of Mary Lingenfelter Thompson,
born Mary Lingenfelter to Henrietta Kennedy
Lingenfelter and Benjamin Harrison Lingenfelter. Both
Henrietta and Benjamin came from Missouri and there
were a number of links to their ancestors in Missouri
records. Henrietta was born Henrietta Kennedy to Judge
Samuel T. and Lucretia (Smith) Kennedy. The Missouri
Genealogy Trails website has an extensive biography
section for Andrew County Missouri and the discussion of
Henry Newton Kennedy gives the link to his father
Samuel T. According to this link, Samuel was born on a
farm in Fayette County, Indiana, September 29th 1830 to
a farmer named John Kennedy, born in North Carolina of
a mother with the maiden name of Charity McMichael,
also from North Carolina. Further links indicate that John
Kennedy was born as John Bennett Kennedy 26 July 1782
in Orange, NC and died 31 August 1863, buried in the
Cain Cemetery in Nodaway, Missouri. His wife, Charity
was born 9 May 1790 in Guilford, North Carolina. John’s
father is given as James Kennedy (died 1808 in Guilford)
and his wife is given the maiden name of Elizabeth
Bailelet, born 1752 in North Carolina. Charity McMichael
was the daughter of Archibald McMichael, who died in
Guilford 23rd of September 1818. Her mother’s name was
also Charity. The James Kennedy link appears to connect
to a Hugh Kennedy, born 1725, died 1814 and Catherine
Hughes. This takes the Kennedy linage out of North
Carolina and into Pennsylvania, where James Kennedy
appears to have been born. Apparently Hugh Kennedy
was born 1725 in Ireland and died in Mifflin, in Allegheny
County, Pennsylvania. Hugh married a Catherine Hughes
in 1746 in Pennsylvania, a daughter of Martin Hughes,
born sometime in 1725 in Maryland and died in Butler
County, Pennsylvania. Hugh Kennedy appears to be the
son of Jane Gray and William Kennedy. William Kennedy
was born in Charlesont Ireland in 1690 and christened 17
September 1692 in Dublin, Ireland. He married Jane Gray
on 3 November 1721 in Dublin. William ended up with
land at the fork of the Youghiogheny and Monongehela
rivers and lived there from 1773 till his death in 1793.
Williams father, given as William T. Kennedy, was born in
Scotland sometime around 1670 and apparently served
with William of Orange in the “Siege of Derry and Ennis
Killen 1689 Battle of the Boyne.” Notes available in
various genealogical references seem to indicate that he
married a woman named Ann and had a large family that
included the William Kennedy that came to America.
On reference available on the web, “Bill Roy’s Genealogy
Page” gives the following information on Hugh Kennedy
son of William and grandson of William T.. It claims that
he came to America when he was only 17 and was
disowned by his Presbyterian father for becoming a
Methodist. This would explain the difficulty of tracing
this line and the tendency for the children to wander
since religious affiliation was an important element of
settlement at this time. Apparently Hugh served as a
private for the colonial army of Pennsylvania in the
Revolution in 1777 and 1778. It also states that Jane
Gray, mother of Hugh, died 9 September 1781, in
Pittsburgh, PA.
But, Henrietta’s mother was Lucretia Webster Smith.
How do you go about tracing that line? Fortunately
Barbara Leimback did a very good job of researching the
Ezekial W. Smith line and posted it April 2005. According
to this source Lucretia Webster Smith was the daughter
of John Payton Smith, born 5 December 1799 and
Elizabeth Crittendon (1800 -1839). Lucretia Webster was
born 1833 and died 1920. Apparently Ezekial W. Smith,
Sr. was born in Tennessee 28 November 1806, son of
Vincent Smith (1778 – 1857) and Anna Dolin (1775).
Now there is a Bedford Tennessee Deed Book, page 334
12/11/1826 in which William Crittendon lists his heirs
and one is Elizabeth Crittendon, wife of John P. Smith.
Apparently William Crittendon changed the spelling of
his name when he moved from Anson (Montgomery
County) North Carolina where he was born in 1765. His
father is given as William C. Crittenden of Essex County,
Virginia and his mother as Sarah Lee. William C.
Crittenden of Essex County is given as the son of Henry
Crittenden and Frances F. Upshaw, born in Gloucester
County Virginia and died 9 November 1716 in Essex
County Virginia, Henry is listed as the son of Richard
Crittenden and Ann Forrest. Sarah Lee married William
C. Crittenden in Virginia in1761 apparently and died
November 9th in 1766 in Montgomery, North Carolina.
Among the Children of Henry Crittenden is a son born
about 1708 (also named Henry) who was the father of
John Lee Crittenden who was the father in turn of John
Jordon Crittenden, Senator from Kentucky, Attorney
General of the US, and Governor of Kentucky, another
son Robert Crittenden, served as secretary and governor
of Arkansas when it was a territory. This connection is
probably the source of the family story that the governor
of Missouri, Thomas Crittenden, was a cousin, since he
was a nephew of John Jordon Crittenden, a very distant
cousin of Elizabeth Crittenden Smith mother of Lucretia
Webster.
The Sarah Lee connection is also difficult to trace. Robert
Lee gave a will that is in book I, page 14, Anson County
North Carolina in which he gives items to his wife Sarah
Lee and his daughter Sarah Crittenden, the date is 1766.
This may be the Sarah Lee that married William C.
Crittenden, the son of Henry Crittenden and Francis F.
Upshaw and was the mother of William C. Crittenden
born 1765 in Anson County and father of Elizabeth
Crittenden, wife of John P. Smith, mother of Lucretia
Webster Smith. Apparently Robert Lee was the son of
James Lee who died in 1732 (his will dated 14 January
1731 in Bertie Precinct, NC, proved in Edgecombe
Precint, NC, November Court, 1732). Apparently he
married a Sarah (Moore?), perhaps born in 1702 in
Nansemond County Virginia, He was, apparently the son
of John Lee of Liecaster England, born around 1670, and
migrated to Nansemond County, where John is found in a
4/20/1694 land patent that gives him the right to
transport 20 persons from England. John had 960 acres
on the upper part of Nansemond County, East side of
Somerton Creek, beginning on a small island on the East
Side of the Creek to the Northeast side of Cyprus Swamp.
These early roots in Virginia, North Carolina, and
Pennsylvania are difficult to trace, particularly when the
mother’s line is what you are after. John Bennett
Kennedy, appears to have married a Charity McMichael
sometime in 1806 in Guilford North Carolina. She
appears to have been born 9 May 1790 in Guilford. The
family appears to have moved to Fayette County Indiana
in 1825 and then moved to Rush County Indiana in 1834,
finally moving to Nodaway County. Charity McMichael to
have been the daughter of Archibald McMichael who
died in Guilford 23 September 1818. His wife was named
Charity but there seems to be no record of her maiden
name.
If the McMichael link is hard to trace, so is the Kennedy.
Elizabeth Bailelet seems to have been born in North
Carolina and to have married James Kennedy in 1772.
The Family Tree Maker listings from Ancetery.Com list
the following children: Samuel Kennedy, born 22 of
October 1775 in Orange County and died 30 April 1840 in
Posey, Rush, Indiana. Mary Kennedy, born 29 December
1772, John Bennett, born 26th of July 1780, Jane, born 9
September 1788, Elizabeth, born 1 of July 1785, Nancy,
born 6 September 1782, and Esther, born 16 March
1796. John Bennett married Charity McMichael, born in
Guilford, NC, 9 May 1790 (1788) in Guilford. They had
the following children in Guilford: Margaret, 30 March
1807, Zabiah, 8 Feb. 1809, Nancy, 3 June 1811, James, 26
June 1812, William S., born 18 Feb. 1813, Elizabeth Ann,
2 Feb. 1815, Archibald McMichael, 15 August 1818,
Charity, born 7 March 1826, Sarah Jane, born 10 October
1823, and Samuel Thomas, born 29 September 1830 in
Fayette County, Indiana.
Apparently Samuel Kennedy got a deed in 1808 from the
heirs of James. These appear to have been Jesse Lynch
and his wife Mary Kennedy, Joseph Ross and his wife
Sarah Kennedy, John Kennedy, Betsy Kennedy, Jenney
Kennedy, Nancy Kennedy, and Esther Kennedy, this land
was now in Alamance County.
Joseph Ross appears to have died September 4th 1836 in
Fayette County, Indiana. Sarah (Kennedy) Ross
renounces her rights to administer the estate in favor of
her son Samuel K. Ross. He seems to have had an
interest in a store at Alquina, Indiana. Sarah appears to
have taken a gray mare, a colt, a bureau, a cupboard, a
clock, a black and white cow, a red pied cow, a trundle
bed and bedding as her hundred dollar share of the
estate, she also got a third part of the remainder which
included 20 geese, a breakfast table, 12 sheep, a stew
kettle, 8 acres of corn, a side saddle, a tea kettle, and
other things of this type. This Sarah Kennedy was born
to James Kennedy and Elizabeth Bailelet in Orange, North
Carolina 24 September 1780, and thus is an older sister
of my ancestor John Bennett Kennedy and an aunt of my
Great Grandmother Henrietta’s father Samuel. There is
speculation on the Donny Hamilton webside that Sarah
Ross has some problems that make her unfit as a
guardian for her children. It is indicated that Joseph D.
Ross owned and “platted” much of Alquina between
1822 and 1825.
John Kennedy’s wife Charity was born in Guilford Co. NC.
9 May 1790 to Charity and Archibald McMichael.
Archibald died 23 September 1818 in Guilford. His son
Thomas (older brother of Charity, wife of John Kennedy)
was born in Guilford in 1778 and died 30 November 1858
in Rush Co. Indiana. He married Nancy Ann Moody, born
28 January 1801 in Guilford, and died 5 August 1848 in
Rush County (buried in Stanley Cemetery, Posey, Indiana.
William (another older brother of Charity) was born 1787
and died 14 September 1848 in Guilford. Thomas and
Nancy Ann Moody had a child named Charity McMichael
who married Jesse Kelam in Guilford 28 January 1830,
the marriage announced in the Greensboro NC “Patriot.”
William McMichael marred Rhoda E. Pegram, died 3
January 1852. Both William and Rhoda are buried in the
Methodist Church Cemetery at 6142 Lake Brandt Road.
William McMichael died leaving five tracts of land
including 45 acres of Haw River tract land that had
belonged to his father Archibald. When Archibald’s wife
Charity (senior, several generations of daughters were all
named Charity) died in Guilford in 1829, she left her bible
to William and all of her beds and household furniture to
her oldest daughter Margaret McMurrey (born 1781).
Jesse Lynch married Mary Kennedy 9 January 1792 in
Orange, North Carolina. Jesse was born in 1752 and died
in 1825. He was the son of Thomas Lynch and Hannah
Schroeder. Thomas Lynch was born 1725 and died
March 15, 1781 in Hillsoboro NC, He was the son of
Jonah Jonach Lynch. Hannah Schroder was the daughter
of Johah Ulrich Schroeder. Jesse Lynch’s father-in-law,
James Kennedy, sold him 264 acres on Jordan Creek and
Jesse was a witness for the quit claim deed that gave
Samuel Kennedy land that had been James Kennedy land
in Alamance County, following the death of James
Kennedy (1808?). Mary Kennedy was the oldest of the
daughters of James and Elizabeth, born 28 December in
Orange, North Carolina.
Archibald McMichael Kennedy was a son of John Bennett
Kennedy and Charity McMichael, an older brother of
Samuel Kennedy. He was born in Guilford, North
Carolina 15 August 1818 and died in Rush County,
Indiana, 3 June 1897. He married Henrietta Langston, 10
October 1820 in Union, Indiana. Between 1870 and 1918
(postings in the web indicate this), Archibald and his sons
Emmett and Charles built over 58 covered bridges.
Apparently Archibald took up the trade of carpenter in
Rush County and moved on to Wabash in 1853, where he
started building bridges as a source of extra money. In
1870 he built a two span covered bridge in Rush County
that stood for more than one hundred years. In 1871, so
it is claimed, he and his son built a 150 foot span in Butler
County, Ohio over Seven Mile Creek. In 1883, Archibald
was elected to the Indiana State Senate.
At a certain point keeping track of these relations
becomes confusing. The Stanley Cemetery in Rush
County, Indiana contains a number of Kennedy and
McMichael graves, including Samuel Kennedy (died April
30th 1840, brother of John Bennett Kennedy) and Nancy
McMichael Kennedy, (died Dec. 11th 1862, sister of John
Bennett Kennedy’s wife Charity McMichael Kennedy) and
Nancy Ann Moody McMichael (died September 5th 1838,
wife of Charity’s brother Thomas McMichael).
Apparently the cemetery is the site of a church where
John McMichael lived in a nearby house and served as
the church janitor. John was the son of Thomas
McMichael and Nancy Ann Moody McMichael and he
and his wife Mahala Britton McMichael are buried in the
Stanley Cemetery, here, along with many relatives.
The 1850 census has John Bennett Kennedy and his wife
Charity and his son Samuel and his wife living in the same
area as Ambrose Cain. John Bennett Kennedy had a
daughter, Sarah Jane Kennedy, born 10 Oct 1823, who
married Charles Leo Cain and had a number of children.
Her daughter Margaret Victoria (age 2 months, 6 days) is
buried in the Cain Cemetery in Nodaway County along
with Sara Jane (age 6 months, 24 days). George M. and
George W., also sons of Sarah Jane and Charles Cain are
buried here. Jesse Cain and Martha, parents of Ambrose
Cain are buried here along with his sister Mourncy Cain.
There is obviously a relationship between the Cains and
the Kennedy family at this point, but it is not clear what
that is or what is going on. The memorial data on
Mariam Lowe Cain indicate that she was the wife of Jesse
Cain and the mother of Mourncy, Nathaniel, Belthelmite,
Griffith, Charles L. (1818 -1894), Lassel, Jesse, Shunamite,
Mary, Bently, and John Cain. If she is the mother of
Charles Leo as well as Ambrose and Charles Leo is the
husband of Sarah Jane, daughter of John Bennett and
Charity Kennedy, sister of Samuel Thomas, it explains
their presence together in the same area and the use of
both Cain and Kennedy of this cemetery. Some of the
Cains would be son-law, daughter-in-law, grandchildren,
etc. of Grandfather and Grandmother John and Charity
Kennedy.
A history of Northwest Missouri published in 1915 and
presented on a website for Andrew County, Missouri, has
a section devoted to Henry Newton Kennedy, a son of
Samuel T. and Lucretia Webster (Smith) Kennedy born
November 25th 1855 in Nodaway County. According to
this account, Samuel was fourteen when he arrived in
Platte County, Missouri. According to the account, the
area was mainly inhabited by Indians at the time. When
he moved to a farm near Maryville in Nodaway County in
1850, there were no families between him and the town
and only four families and a single store in the town
itself.
Samuel apparently was a Methodist, Mason, and an Odd
Fellow Lodge member. Apparently, Samuel was district
deputy grand master for the Masons in 1873 and 1874.
He was elected chairman of the County Court in 1873.
His son was a successful farmer, according to this
account, but a tornado took away all the buildings and
trees July 13, 1883. In 1901, Henry Newton Kennedy
moved to Andrew County on 320 acres, which at the
time of the article, were graced by “a handsome set of
buildings.” These included the “most up-to-date
machinery and equipment.” His wife is described as a
graduate of “Stanberry State Normal School” and as a
local school teacher in Andrew and Nodaway counties.
This description of the situation of Samuel and his son
Henry (Father and Brother of my Great Grandmother
Henrietta (Kennedy) Lingenfelter) illustrates the fate of
my Great Grandmother’s branch of my lineage.
Originally from Ireland, Scotland, and England via the
Guilford area of North Carolina, arriving in the 1730s and
1740s, they found that the land nearest the larger rivers
had already been claimed. Political positions and good
schools were reserved for established families. If they
could read and write in the old country, after a
generation in the backcountry, their children had largely
lost the ability to sign their own name. It was inevitable
that they would quickly move on to new land in Indiana
and Missouri, as soon as it opened up to settlement.
Slowly they obtained training and schooling for their
children and the land and equipment necessary for
success in farming and local crafts, eventually achieving
political and social positions of importance.
By the time my mother’s generation appeared, as far as
the family members that raised me were concerned,
teaching was a generally accepted occupation for a
women. Both my mother and her sister, Jean and
Miriam Thompson, had teaching credentials, my Uncle,
Victor Thompson, had a degree in microbiology from the
University of California, Berkeley, and an MD from USC.
Henrietta (Kennedy) Lingenfelter’s son John Lingenfelter
was an MD gynecologist that is said to have never lost a
single mother in sixty years of practice at the Poly Clinic
in Seattle, Washington.
My generation has carried this to the absurd. I am a
certified public account, a certified clinical
hypnotherapist, I have been a marriage family and child
counselor intern for the State of California, a licensed
substance abuse counselor and associate counselor for
the State of Arizona, I have State of California Teaching
Credentials in School Psychology, Social Science, Life
Science, Physical Science, Agriculture, and Business, a
Masters in Botany from the University of California, Los
Angeles, a Ph.D. from Pacific Western, and I have
received Teaching Fellowships in History at the University
of Houston, Philosophy at the State University of New
York at Albany, Biology at California State University, Los
Angeles. I started teaching graduate students at UCLA at
the age of twenty two and by the age of twenty four was
Curator of the Herbarium of Medicinal Plants for the
Department of Pharmacology of the School of Medicine.
I have recently retired at 68 as School Psychologist and
Director of Special Education for the McFarland Unified
Schools in McFarland, California.
The need to achieve all these titles seems to be a natural
outcome of the influence of my mother and
grandmother on my early development. The family’s
experience in the Missouri of 1870, 1880, etc, convinced
some family members that education was the solution to
family social and economic problems. The result was
that both of my Grandmother Mary (Lingenfelter)
Thompson’s parents were college graduates and she saw
to it that all her children were college graduates as well.
Another pattern that is interesting is the reaction of the
family to the end of farming. By the end of the 19th
century, family members were leaving the farm and
moving to the city. The move to Seattle by Henrietta and
Benjamin Harrison Lingenfelter was a major affair. Both
Hugh Monroe and Mary (Lingenfelter) Thompson were
graduates of Seattle High School, which seems to have
been a good school at that time. But, Benjamin and
Henrietta spend a lot of ministerial assignments in other
places, Tacoma, Helena, Montana, finally ending up in
Torrance, California when it was still a small city. Hugh
and Mary ended up apple ranching in the town of Selah
outside of Yakima, where my mother Jean Thompson
was born. They finally moved to Torrance and then Long
Beach.
Both my parents, Jean (Thompson) Andrews and Ralph
Andrews, were graduates of Long Beach Polytechnic High
School and Long Beach City College. Long Beach was a
major beach resort and naval base, a major port city.
But, my parents could not seem to make up their mind if
they wanted to stay there after I was born. First, the
whole family, Hugh, Mary, my parents, my mother’s
sister Miriam and her husband moved to West Los
Angeles, around 1942, at the beginning of World War II.
Once the war was over my parents moved to a house in
the orange groves outside of Ontario, California when it
had a population of only 22,000. My aunt Miriam
(Thompson) Gilbert moved with her husband Frank to
Encino in San Fernando Valley and my grandmother and
grandfather, Hugh and Mary bought a hilltop in the valley
in Granada Hills. They never actually moved there, but
thought of raising chickens, per “The Egg and I” by Betty
McDonald, a very popular book and movie of that period.
So suddenly city was out and rural was good. This would
be a constant theme in my family. Relatives were
forever moving away from, or back to the city, away
from, or back to the country. It has also been a constant
theme in my life.
Just as my mother finally decided to settle down in North
Torrance, a house a way from a dairy farm, I started
moving and could not seem to stop. Long Beach State
College, University of California Los Angeles, a teaching
position in Western Michigan at Muskegon County
Community College, a position in Johnstown New York at
Fulton Montgomery Community College that saw me
living on Caroga Lake in the Adirondack Mountains.
Hunters taking aim at the rental housing I was living in
and sharing my bathroom with large rats sent me back to
the city and to Miami, Florida to teach community
college at Miami-Dade South Campus in 1968.
But, like my relatives, I could not make up my mind and
the next year saw me back up at Johnstown, but this
time buying my own house in town. That was when I
married a college chemistry professor from Manhattan
Island in New York, with hopes of actually living in the
city. We compromised on downtown Schenectady, New
York, where we purchased a very old house in the old
Stockade Area, the historic part of the city on the
Mohawk River. But that wasn’t enough, so the next year
we were off too London, England. I was doing research
at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, and my wife and I
were teaching science in the Kent County Council
schools, till the religious discrimination, then in practice
against non-Christian children, became so extreme that
my wife and I left England in protest.
So that found us living in a trailer park in a swampy area
north of Jacksonville, Florida till I got a job teaching
college in tidewater Virginia, where we lived in an old
farmhouse not far where my ancestors, the Crittenden’s
had live two hundred years before. But, we could not
make up our minds just where to stay, a few years later
we were living in a the Park Wilshire Hotel on Wilshire
Blvd, and then we were in Houston, Texas, and then
Pasadena, California, then Richmond, Virginia, Portland,
Oregon, and then back to Houston, and then back to
Portland, and then we moved to Costa Mesa, in Orange
County, and then Seattle, while I moved back to Houston,
Texas, to play auditor for the Department of Defense. It
was as if all the social and geographic and rural vs. urban
indecision of my family had curled up in a giant ball and
sprung right in my face.
The solution was a series of 12 step programs for various
types of dependence and codependence that has built up
as I attempted to escape the pressure of the continually
tightening string. At first I could not slow down, soon I
was back in Seattle, then in San Jose. In San Jose, I began
training in hypnosis, and took a Masters degree in
Marriage, Family, and Child Counseling, became a
teacher, and then trained as a School Psychologist. Soon
I was back in Long Beach where I had been born, and I
stayed in the general Southern California area for the
next few years till I took a job in rural Kern County as a
School Psychologist, and I have been living in Kern
County ever since. I retired from School Psychology in
2008 and spent ten weeks doing School Psychology in
rural Ohio in 2010. Otherwise I have been working as a
graduate student in the Humanities, emphasis Art, at
local colleges, particularly California State University,
Bakersfield. Still working out the rural against urban
dilemma and still trying to unwind the springs within.
Still dealing with how I had become something so
complex and so tightly wound that I belonged
everywhere and nowhere and I was spinning so rapidly at
that point that I first entered 12 step programs, it
seemed nothing could stop me. And yet, I was the
natural product, as you can see above, of the forces that
had created me, moving ever more rapidly, becoming
overeducated, absorbing and processing more and more
information.
In 12 step they tell you easy does it, keep it simple, first
things first, if it works do not fix it, time takes time, its
wanting what you have not having what you want that
counts, its an attitude of gratitude, of surrender, of
acceptance, that you did not cause, you cannot control,
you cannot cure the addictive problems of others, but
you need to focus on your own problems. Which is what
I have tried to do. But, it is not easy. Gradually, my
family has turned from farming and building bridges to
teaching, being a doctor, my mother left teaching to
become a Speech Pathologist, now I have become a
School Psychologist. My Great Grandparents were
preachers, brothers, fathers of preachers, I became a
hypnotist, one step further toward mind control of
others.
One of the things that becomes apparent in doing
research on these groups of ancestors is the patterns
that existed associated with occupations and religious
institutions. Generally, Quakers associated with Quakers,
Methodists with Methodists, Baptists with Baptists, and
were buried in association with particular churches.
Samuel T. Kennedy is described as being Baptist. His son
Henry is described as having no affiliation at all.
Henrietta and Benjamin Harrison Lingenfelter were
Disciples of Christ, Benjamin was a Disciples of Christ
Minister, originally his male lineage came from Quaker
ancestors. The Thompsons had been Methodists,
Fredrick Thompson, older brother of Hugh Monroe, was
a Methodist minister.
Generally, Jews and Christians, Catholics and Protestants,
Methodists and Baptists and Presbyterians and Quakers,
Episcopalians, Lutherans, Mennonites, even Dutch
Reformed, within the Protestant community, kept apart.
The Guilford area of North Carolina seems to have been
largely Presbyterian, Quaker, Reformed, Baptist, and
Methodist. The McMichael and Kennedy family appears
to have been either Methodist or nothing much at all.
They did not appear to fit in with the established families
that had large numbers of slaves. Nor, initially, were
they artisans the brought the kinds of skills that would
work in cities. Where they were involved in cities, it was
more for things like politics, judgeships, running a store,
selling land. They did not tend to be the mill operators,
road builders, when they did get involved in building
bridges in Indiana, it seems to have represented a new
skill. They seem to have been more involved with
horses, rather than boats, carts, or railway operations.
So their big entrance into the urban world was when
their men folk became preachers, lawyers, judges,
doctors, when their women became teachers. And
nothing seems to have changed much in that area from
that day to this.
My position as a School Psychologist is sort of a
compromise between my mother’s work as a School
Teacher and a Speech Pathologist, my Uncle’s work as a
Doctor, and my Great Uncles work as a preacher in a
home for unwed mothers (My Great Uncle Fredrick
Thompson of Tacoma, Washington). It is a further
development and compromise of a process that had
been working itself through the family history for some
time. I am just another piece of tubing in the system it
seems.
My other careers fit in the pattern also. I taught native
plants for ornamental uses at California State Polytechnic
University, Pomona in 1966. I taught Botany at Miami
Dade Junior College South Campus in Miami, Florida, in
1968. When I was working as a teaching assistant and
research assistant for the Department of Botany at the
University of California, Los Angeles, it was still part of
the School of Agriculture. This is not inconsistent with
the farming background of my family and Grandfather
Hugh Thompson’s work as a State Agricultural Inspector
when he wasn’t apple farming or working for the local
post office in Selah, Washington.
My Grandfather’s twin brother was a dentist. He had a
large garden on property developed by my Great
Grandfather Thompson in Des Moines, Washington. He
and his friends and family had a good deal of knowledge
of various varieties of fruits and berries. It is not
surprising that my work for the Botany Garden and
Herbarium at UCLA, caused the Department of
Agriculture to offer me the position of curator of the
herbarium of the National Arboretum in Washington in
1964, for at that time, Dr. Mathias, the woman I was
working under in my doctoral studies, was considered
one of the world’s leading taxonomic botanists, and the
kinds of things I was studying were a natural
development of the interests of my farming relatives and
ancestors in the living things of the land and garden.
Teaching about them was a natural development of the
new interest of members of my family in State Normal
Schools and teaching institutions. The University of
California, Los Angeles, where my mother obtained her
degree in education, her sister obtained her degree in
nutrition, I obtained my MA in botany, had originally
been a state normal school for Los Angeles.
The woman I was studying under, Dr. Mildred Mathias,
had obtained her Ph.D in taxonomic botany in Missouri,
at Washington University in Saint Louis, and she herself
represented one of the many Missouri families that had
relocated to Southern California. So everything was
following its natural course. But, the problem for me was
there were too many natural courses and too many
streams of energy were coming together in too many
places and too many ways at once.
Part of this is caused by the effect of Southern California,
on the Pacific Coast, San Pedro, San Diego, Long Beach,
international ports, they attracted many different
religions and cultures. My father and mother, Ralph B.
Andrews, Jean (Thompson) Andrews, her parents Hugh
Monroe Thompson and Mary (Lingenfelter) Thompson
were attracted to the writings and the religious services
of Ernest Holmes and the Institute of Religious Science
and Science of Mind Magazine, now called “Centers for
Spiritual Living.” Holmes described what he taught as a
fusion of liberal transcendental “new thought”
Christianity with Hinduism, Buddhism, Platonism, liberal
Jewish thought, Daoism, Islam, etc.. God became a
pantheistic infinite cosmic mind that was inclusive of all
things, a Hindu Brahman, Buddhist Buddhamind,
Platonist Hen One, boundless love and truth. It was
German Romanticism, Berkeley, Fitche, Hegel, Kant,
Alfred North Whitehead, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Jung,
William James, Norman Vincent Peale, all wrapped up in
shiny paper. I took to it like a duck to water and I still am
stuck in the same pond, head full of philosophy and
science, my metaphysics not that much different than
what I learned from listening to Ernest Holmes lecture
every Sunday from his Theatre podium in Beverly Hills. It
is not surprising that I taught Comparative Religion at
several colleges, including an upper division class in
South Asian Philosophy at the State University of New
York at Albany in 1969-1970 as a teaching fellow, or that
I have spent a good deal of time in the Thai Buddhist
Temple in Bakersfield and the Tibetan Buddhist Group in
McFarland, California. It is my cup of Buddhist tea.
I believe my Grandmother and Grandfather Thompson,
both fans of Gandhi would have been in sympathy, I
know Hugh Thompson would have been because we
read Self Realization Fellowship books together, including
“Autobiography of a Yogi.” He used to take me to the
Religious Science Church in Hermosa Beach, which held
its services in the barroom of the old Hermosa Biltmore
Hotel.
Hugh Monroe Thompson was the son of the operator of
a livery business in Seattle, Washington. According to my
Grandfather, his father had practically a monopoly on
livery services in Seattle and refused to convert to the
age of the automobile because he thought automobiles
were a fad. At some point the Thompsons had moved to
Oregon and it was here that Hugh’s sister Mary would
meet, and later marry, Alfred Clinton Gilbert. This
marriage was significant because it would bring together
two people, now the stuff of legends, Alfred and Mary
Gilbert, that are the star characters in what is becoming
an important seasonal American dramatic production,
the play, and television movie, “The Man Who Saved
Christmas.”
Alfred had an MD from Yale and was a Olympic gold
medal winner in pole vault. He created one of the largest
most successful toy manufacturing operations in the
United States centered on a factory complex in New
Haven that made electric trains (American Flyer),
chemistry sets (Gilbert brand), fans, food mixers,
mechanical building kits (Erector Sets), magic sets,
microscope sets, etc.. For a while his toy company was a
legend at Christmas time, I and my Father Ralph B.
Andrews visited the Gilberts for a week and toured the
factory and grounds of the square mile of Gilbert estates
in suburban New Haven in the summer of 1952, when I
was 12. My aunt Miriam (Thompson) Gilbert married
Frank Gilbert, a son of Harold Gilbert of Portland,
Oregon. Harold was a brother of Alfred, which made
Frank his nephew. Frank had studied engineering at Yale.
When I was two years old, in 1942, my Father went to
work as a Bank Examiner for the Treasury Department
and was sent to the Utah area. My Mother went to work
in the Reber aircraft plant (later Lear Jet). Frank Gilbert
was an electronic engineer on the staff of the plant and
my Grandfather Hugh was working as their purchasing
agent. A job he kept until I was fourteen in 1954. The
plant was on Pico Blvd. between Santa Monica and West
Los Angeles and we moved to the Pico Blvd. area in West
Los Angeles to be close to the aircraft facility. Reber
seems to have been making parts for electronic
equipment in aircraft, but I am not sure, I was only two
years old. As a result my Mother and Father were living
next door to my Grandmother and Grandfather
Thompson and only a few blocks away from my Aunt and
Uncle, Frank and Miriam Gilbert, and only a few miles
away from my Grandmother’s sister Lois (Lingenfelter)
Engle. My Uncle Victor Thompson had a room in the
house, though he actually spent most of his time with the
Air Force in India. My Great Grandparents, Benjamin
Harrison Lingenfelter and Henrietta (Kennedy)
Lingenfelter were actually living in the same house with
my Grandparents. When Henrietta died, I was given her
sick room as my own room.
At an early age I was exposed to technology, science,
business, accounting, federal auditing. It is not surprising
that I have California teaching credentials in agriculture,
business, social science, life science, physical science, and
school psychology, that I am a Certified Public
Accountant and retired federal auditor (my Father was a
Public Accountant, and when he retired from his
accounting business at the age of 84, Vice President of
the Southern California Chapter of the California Society
of Public Accountants). All are influences that can be
traced to experiences described above, and things that
were happening to my family as a result of happenings in
the world at large.
World War II brought the Federal Government and the
Military to Southern California in a major way, as noted
above. My Mother’s favorite Aunt, Marty (Lingenfelter)
Farman, (another daughter of Henrietta and Benjamin
Harrison and sister of Lois and Mary) married a graduate
of California Institute of Technology that would pioneer
the application of new ideas in communication and
meteorology to the Air Force, later becoming a
decorated Brig. General of the Air Force on General
McArthur’s Staff in the occupation of Japan.
Lois taught English in Torrance High School, later moving
to the Los Angeles District and Brendo Junior High
School, when she worked as a Counselor. She married
John Engle, a brilliant mathematician and carpenter, who
became the head of set estimating for the 20th Century
Fox movie lot. Lois and John Engle’s son John would
major in Physics at UCLA and their daughter Jane would
go to the University of California at Santa Barbara, later
obtaining a doctorate in English and teaching at the
University of Florida.