His name was Notley Anderson - not Nodley

[Susan Higginbotham]

(12-19-2014 08:55 AM)L Verge Wrote:  

(12-19-2014 07:50 AM)Jim Woodall Wrote:  Laurie - As per usual, you are such a treasure trove of info. I thank you for your comments and information.

Those comments certainly go towards explaining a connection to the Kirby's. However, I beg your indulgence for these further comments and questions.

Let me employ a device that Kauffman makes good use of in looking through the data, the use of a timeline.

Several authors report that Mary Surratt indicated she had a family connection or was related to William Wallace Kirby.

Given that Mary is the one to be providing these comments, we have a natural date of no later than July 1865 that Mary could have said this.

It is my understanding, and please correct me if the following is a misstatement, the relationship(s) to the Kirbys through John Z. Jenkins' offspring would only have taken place after the demise of Mary Surratt.

Therefore, if Mary believes there is a relation to the Kirbys and she is the one making the claim in her words, the relationship with the Kirby's had already been in existence and was re-enforced through the later association.

There is a marriage between Theodore Neale and Sarah Kirby. Both of these individuals are related to families who had Fox Hall lands and, in the case of Theodore, he had rights to Fox Hall lands. Theodore Neale is Richard Neale's brother and, in a sense, John Surratt's uncle.

I have further to say on the Kirbys, Neales, and maybe the Talberts. However, I need to clarify a couple of subtleties in the relationships in the documents I am looking through. I know I have already misinterpreted one aspect and am having to look more closely at the details of some transactions to validate some of the family relationships. I will have a further post on this soon.

And a little bit on language. When I moved out west to Lake Havasu City in Arizona, my siblings and I were chided about our accent. The standard question was of the form, "Where are you from, England or something like that?" I grew especially tired of the incessant teasing that my accent provoked since I had speech therapy for a speech impediment. Thus my speech was a wee bit more stilted as I was trained to slow down my speech and annunciate more clearly. So, I stuck to a standard retort, "No, I am from Maryland, but for all intents and purposes, close enough." That seemed to cut down on most of the follow up teasing.

There was always one word or variations that would set off some snickering, wash or Washington. Of course, those words were pronounced warsh/worsh and Warshington/Worshington. So, how do you all say "wash the car?"

Jim - First of all, I don't doubt that Mrs. Surratt knew Kirbys before the war. Southern Maryland was a closely knit "community" where families knew each other (and inter-married) for generations until after WWII - when the "foreigners" started moving in from around the country!!

We know that William Wallace Kirby lived right down H Street from the boardinghouse, and I also suspect that Mrs. Surratt knew Kirbys from the 1840s, as she and another woman in the area of Oxon Hill rode the countryside raising funds to establish a Catholic Church in that area. St. Ignatius still exists today. Most of the Kirbys that I know of still call that area home.

Now, as for the Southern Maryland dialect. I mentioned those "foreigners" who moved in after WWII. Their dialects have helped to clean up (or confuse) our twang. My family never added the "r" sound to those particular words, but I know many who did.

My favorite from listening to classmates in high school was the word "tar." Many of them put a vague Boston spin on that word so that it could pass for "tar - as in that black stuff on the road," "tower - as in those fire towers that used to be in our (pronounced "ar") town ("far tar"), or "tire - as those round things that make cars move." Some of my friends also preferred "crick" to "creek."

One of the best places to visit in order to hear the left-overs of true Old English is Tangier Island and the town of Crisfield, which are off the coast of Maryland in the Chesapeake Bay. Families dating back to the 1600s have remained in that area and conducted fishing businesses for many generations. The area is only accessible by boat, and the families have inter-married and held on to their "native" English brought over by their forefathers.

According to census records and his obit, William Wallace Kirby was a native of D.C. (he was a prominent member of an organization called the Association of Oldest
Inhabitants of Washington). The 1900 census indicates that his parents were born in Maryland. His wife was named Virginia; I haven't found a surname for her.

There's an entertaining story in the April 3, 1903 Washington Times about Kirby, at the request of John Surratt's lawyer, spiriting the young man off to the lawyer's home following his trial to protect Surratt from public wrath.