Mystery Solved! ty FB! ty MHS & MDSA!

I am not a big user of social networking sites. About fifteen months ago, I opened a Facebook account to explore sharing photos with family. I decided to go another route and never looked at FB again. Occasionally, I'd get friend request emails which I ignored. Couldn't figure out why I was getting them, because, as far as I knew, my account was "invisible.” As it turns out, if one's email is in someone's address book, and they authorize FB to send invites to their address book, well, then people like me get one. Once I learned that, I didn't feel bad ignoring the invites because I figured the person didn't know they had invited me in the first place, so didn't know they were being ignored.

Then, this spring my brother invited me. How could I tell my brother I wouldn't be his friend? So, I accepted the handful of invites I had accumulated, because if I accept my brother, shouldn't I accept the others? Didn't decline, because I didn't want anyone to feel rejected in case they were notified of the decline, but, as I've since discovered, no such notification is sent. I explored FB a little, but I'm a bit uncomfortable having friends from different aspects of my life intermingled, along with family, so don't go looking for friends. Although, it is absolutely astonishing how many people are there from my past and present.

A month ago, maybe two, I participated in the NARA Civil War scavenger hunt. Just for fun, because I like hunts with clues (what genealogist wouldn't) and, in completing the hunt, found myself following quite a few NARA-related sites on Facebook, Flicker, Twitter, and YouTube. Mostly Facebook. The volume on my FB newsfeed increased dramatically. I found the short blurbs to be a very convenient way to learn of NARA holdings. "Document of the Day” is fantastic! So, I promptly joined every genealogy and historical society related to my research places of interest, as well as state archives, libraries, etc. Newsfeed volume dramatically increased again. Checking every day or two doesn't take much time, certainly not as much as if I were getting the same info by individual emails. When I fancy, I follow a link and read more. There have been occasional "finds," but Saturday's was a "motherlode."

THE MYSTERY

I have not been doing what I would call "serious" research for very long, about three years, with the first year using only online sources. During the past two years, I've concentrated on two families. From my maternal line my 4g-grandfather Cook, because he was born in Connecticut and Connecticut is near enough so I can do "field" research at the Connecticut State Library, Connecticut Historical Society and various county and town locations. I want to get experience working with records not available online, and I'd like them close enough so it doesn't cost a fortune to view them.

The second project is online-only on my paternal grandmother's maternal line, the Carrere's. Chosen for various reasons, but primarily because of the wealth of information I've been able to find for this family, unlike some of the more stubborn lines. Online-only because my Carrere's lived in California, Washington, Minnesota, New York City, and Baltimore, originally emigrating from France. All too far to reasonably research "on location" and I have yet to visit the nearest FHL, an hour's drive away, so haven't tried ordering films, etc..

My grandma's middle name was "Lise." I remember my grandma telling me she was named for "an island in France." My grandmother told me this more than once, as she did many stories about growing up in San Francisco, and being a young mother with a newborn in a mountain camp while my grandfather worked building Big Creek Dam in California. I am guessing Big Creek Dam, because I have photo scans of my newly-wed grandparents, dated and labelled. I also have dated and labelled photos of my dad as an infant with relatives for Summit and Donner Lake, which may have been taken during a vacation trip(s), since I haven’t yet identified any dam built in those locations in the 1920s.

When I was 30-something with two young daughters of my own, it struck me that my grandma was not going to be around forever. So I'd talk with her on the phone regularly and afterwards wrote down the stories she told me. I was not doing genealogy then, so I did not ask the kinds of questions I would now if she were still alive. After each phone call, I wrote down what she said, because after having children, I lost confidence in my ability to remember much of anything.

All I knew was that my grandma thought her middle name "Lise" was for "an island in France." BTW, I thought it so beautiful that our oldest daughter's middle name is "Lise." About ten years after my grandmother died, I became interested in family research. I collected names for a while, did some online census research, which was painfully slow in 2002 compared with today. I tried to find "Isle de Lise" in France, or anywhere in the world, because that was my interpretation of my grandma's story. No island found with that name. From my dad's cousin I learned the name of my grandma's mother: Mary Lise Carrere.

Through online sources and obtaining a few BMD documents, I've identified Mary Lise's parents, her paternal grandparents (her maternal grandparents are a Hopkins mystery) and then "a bunch of Carrere's" in Baltimore, descendants of immigrant ancestor John Carrere, who in 1792:

“June 16th. John Carrere, merchant, son of John Carrere of the Department of Vela Gironve, in the town of Lisburn, in the Kingdom of France, physician, and Mary Silbelat, his wife, lately arrived in the city of Philadelphia, from Bordeaux, in France, via Virginia, took and subscribed the oath aforesaid.”

[Pennsylvania Archives, 2 ser, Vol III, "Names of Persons Who Took the Oath of Allegiance to the State of Pennsylvania Between the Years 1776 and 1794," page 65, viewed 20 Apr 2010 on Footnote.com (www.footnote.com)]

I won't describe why I'm fairly confident that this John Carrere is my immigrant ancestor, but the short story is that it helps to have a famous collateral relative, John Merven Carrere, a Beaux-Arts architect, who designed the 42nd Street branch of the New York Public Library, among many other well-known buildings.

US census information before 1880 doesn't specify relationships, so when there is a collection of more than two adults plus children enumerated for one household, it can be difficult to sort them into parents and children. Lise Buchanan appears in several Carrere households. She's with Mary Lise's grandfather, William, when he was @15. Lise is with Mary Lise's father, John, in two enumerations, when he was one and eleven. In the 1880 census, the first to record relationships, Lise is alone. Lise is with John's young family in St. Paul, Minnesota, in the 1885 Minnesota state census, when Mary Lise was four, but, again, relationships were not recorded. Lise Buchanan was shown as 74 years old in the 1885 census, so it's not surprising that I have not found her in later censuses.

Who was Lise Buchanan? Why was she living with three generations of my direct line ancestors? Was she a Carrere who married a Buchanan? Was she a Buchanan? There are marriage index entries for Carrere men marrying Buchanan’s. Perhaps she was a Carrere who married a Buchanan. Why were French Catholic Carrere's marrying possibly-Scotch Presbyterian Buchanan's?

It seemed obvious that both Mary Lise and my grandma were named for Lise Buchanan, not after an island, unless all three women were named for an island. Where did "an island in France" come from? The census records indicate Lise Buchanan's place of birth variously as "East Indies," "Mauritius," "Isle of Mauritius," and Maryland, none of which were an island in France circa 1810.

THE FIND

Saturday's reading of my FB newsfeed included a June 11th announcement from the Maryland Historical Society, with a link to a website:

"The first 100 years of the Maryland Historical Magazine, published by MdHS, is now available online! This is a cooperative imaging project of MdHS and the MD State Archives provided to the public free of charge."

mdhs.mdsa.net

On the website searched for "Carrere." One article found-- "Buchanan Family Reminiscences" by Amy Hutton published in the September, 1940 issue of the society's quarterly, Maryland Historical Magazine.

The article contains the memories of Amy Hutton's mother, Sydney Clair Buchanan. Lise Buchanan was one of Sydney's three sisters. The four girls were born on the Isle of France in the early 1800s.

Their father, William Buchanan, was the son of the William Buchanan who married Esther Smith, and was business partner with her brother, John Smith, together creating the shipping firm, Smith and Buchanan. William, the son, made a trip to the "Isle of France, a French possession in the Indian Ocean northeast of Madagascar....It had been settled first by the Dutch, who named it Mauritius..." According to the article, William did not intend to stay long, but fell in love with the daughter of a local spice plantation owner, and married Marie Louise Merven in 1804. Marie Louise was French and a Catholic. They had five children, one who died in infancy.

When William died about 1817, Marie Louise wrote her brother-in-law informing him of his brother's death and saying she would abide by his wishes. The instructions were to bring the family to Baltimore, which Marie Louise did, leaving her homeland with her four young daughters and "a negro maid." The article describes the journey and their life in the Baltimore household of two spinster aunts, William's sisters.

The article describes how two of Marie Louise’s daughters married two Carrere brothers, one couple dying childless, the other having six children. When one sister died leaving six children motherless, Lise kept house and raised the children. There are many, many other details describing the four sisters' lives. In addition, the article includes the relationship and vitals information so interesting to genealogists.

This eight-page article's treasures include the answers to my Lise Buchanan mystery.

-Lise was born on the Isle of France, once known as Mauritius. [According to Wikipedia, the island was renamed "Mauritius" by the British when they took control in 1810 during the Napoleonic Wars.]

-Lise's sister, Esther, married John Carrere and they had six children. After Esther died, Lise raised the children.

-Lise and her sisters were raised Catholic by their French mother. Their father's family was Presbyterian. The article describes some of the family dynamics for this Catholic family living in a Presbyterian household.

The mystery of "an island in France" seems relatively solved. My grandmother did not have much contact with her mother. Mary Lise left when my grandma was two, and after a very bitter court battle, the father was granted custody and he limited contact between the children and their mother. To my knowledge, my grandma did not re-establish a relationship with her mother as an adult. She told me directly many times that she considered her step-mother her "real mother-the woman who raised her," the woman I always knew as my great-grandmother. In the past five years I've discovered that my grandma's brother did locate and communicate with his mother, Mary Lise. Discovered in my father's possessions was a letter written by Mary Lise to her young children reassuring them of her love and her efforts to see them. The letter was in the same box with newspaper clippings of the very public court battle. My father could only have gotten this letter and clippings from my grandmother's possessions, but neither are alive to ask. So, I might surmise that my grandma's "an island in France" story were based on childhood memories from limited time with her mother, stories told her by her father's family, or perhaps from her Carrere grandfather who died when my grandmother was almost 42. I can see how "Isle of France" might become "island in France," and I'm not sure if I will ever know any more.

Very satisfying is that I can now assign my "bunch of Carrere's" into families without waiting for the opportunity to view probate or church records. Which I will do eventually, but I feel reasonably confident saying that the architect, John Merven Carrere, was Mary Lise's father's first cousin. Also exciting is being able to extend the Buchanan line, as well as the other allied families mentioned in the article.

The article explains how it came to be that members from a staunchly Presbyterian family came to marry French Catholic Carrere’s. It was half-French Catholic Buchanan's marrying Carrere's. The interfaith, cross-cultural marriage occurred a generation earlier when William married Marie Louise.

The time period described in the article seems to end somewhere in the 1840s, perhaps 1850s. Coupled with my earlier research, Lise Buchanan emerges as a woman who never had children of her own (the article offers a very romantic story for why Lise never married), but nurtured three generations of Carrere's. First, her deceased sister's six children. Next, her grandnephew (John, Mary Lise's father) when his mother died a month after he was born. Finally, in her eighth decade, when she was in St. Paul, Minnesota, with John, his wife, and four young children, including my great-grandmother, Mary Lise Carrere.

I also get to review my sources for "Louise Buchanan," because, according to the article, that was Lise's given name. ["Louise (always called Lise)"]

Thank you, FaceBook, Maryland Historical Society, and the Maryland State Archives, for a serendipitous Saturday, June 12th!