This week I decided to highlight Alonzo Havington Ennis, not only because he was a man whose legacy includes good deeds but whose tale came to me through a good deed. (Technically, I could go into good land deeds too. He had a fair deal of land to his name. However, more important to my research were the good land deeds of his wife's family - one key to my being able to break through the brick wall that had kept us from going any further back. Anyways, back to the generous kind of good deeds...)
A Genealogical Good Deed
Alonzo and his wife Olive Bird were among my first interests in family history. As a child, my parents often volunteered at the Oakland LDS Family History Library. While we would often go to my grandparents' house whenever they called upon to work at the library, sometimes my brother and I would end up at the library with them. We would quietly find ways to entertain ourselves. At first, this meant shadow puppet shows using unoccupied microfilm readers or looking through the card catalog for the hardest word to read (the winner was Czechoslavakia).
Eventually, I decided that I wanted to do family history. My initial methods were not very effective. They consisted of picking random books off shelves and looking in the indexes for familiar surnames. So, my parents set tasks for me, like looking through specific records for Alonzo and Olive. I found some secondary records for Olive's birth but nothing that helped us get past Alonzo's parents William and Margaret or to find Olive's parents. However, it helped me learn the very basics of research. Eventually, Mom taught me how to read old documents and had me help her search wills and church records for other ancestors. At BYU, I took a family history class and honed my skills by researching my ancestors Elias and Eliza (Fowlke) Aston. But it always bothered me that I could never get any further on the Ennis and Bird families.
Then, after my college graduation, it happened - the good deed that helped me learn more about Alonzo and Olive and eventually about many generations of their ancestors.
A kind distant cousin contacted my father. We had never met her but she had stumbled across the website my father had built, which included information on our family history. She had seen that we were descendants of Alonzo and Olive but that we went no further back than his parents and Olive. In her email, she said she had information that we might want. That email was followed soon after by a package. In it were these two pictures:
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| Alonzo Havington Ennis |
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| Olive Bird |
Perhaps you know what's it like to have heard the name of a long-dead relative and then, at last, to see their faces. If you have, you know what joy I felt. If not, then I will tell you that you go from the murk of only having an abstract image of these people you know so well by name, from the uncertain imaginings of what they may have looked like, to having a definite idea of their faces. In your mind, you can see them now as they appeared when they were alive, walking, smiling, holding their children. They become more real. I have experienced this with the Ennises, the Astons, and ancestor George Southam, and each time it was a delight to see their faces at last.
But it was even better than that. Also included in the package was the copy of a manuscript written by Alonzo and Olive's grandson Calvin and a page from a county history that linked Olive to her parents James and Mary Bird. Here were details of their lives, an account of Alonzo's personality, and information that I would be able to use to push further back in time to earlier generations!
This relative blessed me through her kind deed and now, if you wish to know more about the ancestry of Alonzo and Olive, I will pay her kindness forward. Click here to see my website on the Ennis genealogy (scroll down for the Birds). Be aware though that I am still building many of the pages and will post the missing pages as I am able. I had much of the information posted on Boydhouse.com (my father's website) but since I have an easier time accessing Olive and Eliza (my website), any updates to my information will be posted there.
An Ancestor's Good Deeds
Alonzo was born in 1819 in Schenectady, New York to William A. and Margaret Elizabeth (Snell) Ennis and grew up in upstate New York. The religious environment at that time and place is something with which I'm quite familiar, being LDS. It was a time of revivals and spiritual renewal, a time when people were making decisions about what they believed and allying themselves to one church or another. Joseph Smith, the first president of the LDS church, was living in upstate New York at the time and described "this time of great excitement":
Some time in the second year after our removal to Manchester, there was in the place where we lived an unusual excitement on the subject of religion. It commenced with the Methodists, but soon became general among all the sects in that region of country. Indeed, the whole district of country seemed affected by it, and great multitudes united themselves to the different religious parties, which created no small stir and division amongst the people, some crying, “Lo, here!” and others, “Lo, there!” Some were contending for the Methodist faith, some for the Presbyterian, and some for the Baptist.
According to Calvin Ennes, Alonzo's father eventually chose spiritualism - in essence, a movement featuring the belief that the living can communicate with the dead and associated with mediums and seances. The Ennises, like Joseph Smith's family initially, seemed to be divided in their beliefs. At least, Alonzo made his own choice. He became a Seventh-day Adventist, as did many of his posterity. My own grandfather (Alonzo's great-grandson) spent part of his childhood attending an Adventist church in Arizona.
The Ennises moved to Ohio. Here, Alonzo taught school and met Olive Bird. Olive was the daughter of James and Mary (Bunker) Bird. Before Olive was born, the Birds had moved from the area around Palmyra, New York in 1819 (with other family members moving in the spring of 1820 - a familiar town and date to any reader who is LDS like me). In Ohio, James farmed, "preached the Gospel" (though I'm not sure which church he belonged to), and practiced a form of herbal medicine. Alonzo and Olive moved from Union County, Ohio, where they had met and married, after the birth of their sixth child.
In Henry County, they bought land and had a great deal of success in farming. Another daughter, Sarah Olive, was born there but three and a half years later, tragedy struck. Olive and their youngest baby did not survive childbirth. Alonzo was left to raise his children alone and he carried on for another nine, almost ten years, with great grace and dignity.
Among the details that I learned about Alonzo from his grandson Calvin's account, two details particularly impressed me and gave me a picture of a man of conviction who nevertheless was kind and generous with those who believed differently:
"Alonzo was liberal in his belief. He not only kept the Sabbath Day holy, but he kept Sundays holy also. He would not do anything nor permit any members of his household to do anything on Sunday that would disturb people of other faiths."
"When the Community Church was built at Texas, Sarah Ennes stated that Alonzo Ennes was instrumental in getting the church finished by giving a large contribution towards its completion. Although always an Advent by faith, he wanted other churches to thrive."
What an example! In our time, when people are often so divided, it's good to remember that we can be firm in our beliefs, we can practice as our conscience dictates, and yet we can, like Alonzo, be civil, considerate, and loving with our neighbors. That is part of both my heritage and my belief system. Even before I knew Alonzo as well as I do now, conviction with kindness is something that was instilled in me and it continues, strengthened by the example of this good man, to be part of me. I hope that you may find inspiration in the good deeds of Alonzo as well.
Next week's challenge from No Story Too Small: "Week 9 (Feb 26-Mar 4) – Close to Home. Which ancestor is the closest to where you live? Who has a story that hits “close to home”?" I grew up and have returned to live in Northern California. Having lived in Virginia and traveled in Europe, I know how relatively recent Californian history is (or rather, the European-American part of it - of course, the Miwok have been here a long time). My own family history in California is even more recent. However, I've decided that this is a good time to explain how the first of my family came to be here. So, next week, we go back in time to 1919. Until then, do a good deed in honor of Alonzo!
