George Leslie Gilbert Sr., marriage to Mattie Delilah Anderson and their ministry education.

George Leslie Gilbert Sr.
I never knew him. He died in 1945, so only my older sister knew him, and she was only 3 years old when he died, so she has just bare memories.

What we know about him is from our dad, stories, letters, and other family memorabilia that gives little clues into the character of a person.

He and our grandmother, Mattie Delilah Anderson, were married in Dec. 12, 1917 and our father was born Oct. 2, 1918. Both were attending Vanderbilt University in Nashville at that time studying at the School of Religion. We also know George was working at the Old Hickory gunpowder factory in Nashville while he attended school.

George graduated in 1918 with a three year diploma (not the same as a Bachelor's Degree). From the 1917 – ’18 Announcement (Catalog) – “Diploma – A diploma is granted to those who complete the required work, but who have no baccalaureate degree. The recipient of a diploma, equally with the holder of a degree, is reckoned a graduate of the University, and is enrolled among its Alumni.”

George Leslie Gilbert Sr.

Grandpa George Leslie Gilbert Sr. left

In 1908 George attended Clarendon College, School of Religion in Clarendon, Texas. This school was run by the Methodist Episcopal Church, South and awarded two year degrees.

About Clarendon College

In 1917 - 1918, Mattie (real name Martha) was considered part of the Junior class at Vanderbilt University, or a 1st year student.

Grandma Mattie Anderson Gilber, center front (white blouse)

From the Vanderbilt University 1918 Commodore (p. 118 ff.) – Mrs. G.L. Gilbert, from Gould, OK, is listed with the Junior Class in the School of Religion and is pictured in a group photograph of the Junior and Middle Classes. from the 1917 – ’18 Registry of Students – Mrs. G.L. Gilbert, graduate of Scarritt Bible School, is listed as a student in the Junior Class of the School of Religion. (The degree or diploma program was a three year course, with the first year being termed “Junior,” second year called “Middle Class,” and then the “Senior Class.” The course likely began as a two year program and later added a third year, which resulted in calling the second year, Middle Class.) (Scarritt Bible and Training School was originally established in Kansas City, MO in 1892 as an institution to train women missionaries by the United Methodist Church. They moved to Nashville in 1923.)

Scarritt Bible & Training Institute

A Brief Marriage ends
By 1926? they were divorced. From the information we have, they must have been separated for several years before they actually divorced. Our dad never knew why they divorced, as he was very young (born 1918) but always was told it had to do with something in the church. Grandpa was a minister and our grandma was a deaconess in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South.

We have always speculated about a possible major rift in doctrine, perhaps whether or not he should stay in the ministry (not the best paying job there is), or some other broiling issues within the church. Whether or not this was really the reason, it undoubtedly affected our father's view of the church and faith as he saw it being the source of huge instability and sadness in his early life.

Or perhaps just as possible, they found they were not really compatible and with divorce being rare and in disfavor, the church became an excuse to end it. Neither of the grandparents were young when they married: Grandpa was 38 and grandma was 26. Grandpa never married again nor is there any evidence he was ever even interested in another woman. Grandma remarried 12 years later. Obviously neither of them left the marriage because of someone else already on the scene.

George Leslie Gilbert Sr. was the oldest of six children, born in 14 Oct. 1879 in Shelby County, Kentucky. Son of Francis Warren Gilbert and Sarah B. Parkhurst, we know very little about his family life growing up, or about his parents and their background and values.

What made him want to go into the ministry? We don't know. None of the writings or letters found to date give any indication of how he received his calling.

Blogging Family History

How to Blog Family History
So writing a blog of family history is challenging. I have read many award-winning monographs and articles written by professional genealogists, as well as book length biographies. They are amazing in their attention to detail, understanding of the historical and cultural context of the times, and truly represent detective work that would make Sherlock Holmes sit up and give note.

Maybe someday in my twilight years when the family documents have been catalogued and mined for their secrets, and when we have the opportunity to travel and visit the ancestral homes, then we will sit down to create the quintessential family history book or series of monographs on the family.

Until then, I still want to share the stories that we discover with the family along the way  (my sister is a part of this journey also, though she may yet be a silent "blogger"). Our hope is that one of our children or grandchildren or great grandchildren will catch the genealogy bug and carry on our work after we are gone. We also want our family to know the richness of the lives of our ancestors, their bravery and wisdom, their failings and sorrows, and most of all their faith that carried them through!

This means that we will share stories of the individuals for specific places and times, and they will be incomplete. And there will be more questions generated than questions answered. We think that is a good thing as that will keep you coming back to read more, and keep us researching to find the answers!

You are a Contributor to this Blog
This cannot be a one-sided story. Family members and non-family members must help write the stories, as we all have perspective that contributes to filling out the picture about the lives of those arounds us.

If you are a family member, or even distant cousin, then you have heard a story or remember a snip-it about a time when ..... Please feel free to contribute those rememberances.

If you are not a family member but have research or information about a time and a place that intersects our history, please contribute!

All contributions should be emailed to: jennycoss@gmail.com.

I will take on the responsibility of editing and posting to the appropriate page.

The Why

Why should we preserve family history to be told to the generations to come? It is actually a God-commanded thing to do, that we tell the stories of the wonderous things he has done!

Deuteronomy 11:18-20

King James Version (KJV)

¹⁸ Therefore shall ye lay up these my words in your heart and in your soul, and bind them for a sign upon your hand, that they may be as frontlets between your eyes.
¹⁹ And ye shall teach them your children, speaking of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.
²⁰ And thou shalt write them upon the door posts of thine house, and upon thy gates

What do you do with a pile of papers?

Roots
All my life I heard from my aunt and also from my grandmother on the other side that we were descended from English aristocracy. As a child, I didn't much care about that. Actually I still don't care about that. The era when having a royal blood line was important, well those times are gone. As history will bear witness, people in royal families were every bit as human as everyone else.

I suppose it is all those years of hearing them talk about our family history that got me interested at an early age. Grandma was always working on "the book" which never was completed. Our aunt had the "black trunk" which contained old letters, money from the Civil War era, and other keepsakes of our family. All these things went to the back of my mind as I married, worked, raised children and went about the daily things of life. Not until Mom passed away, did we discover that she was the keeper of the items from "black trunk" and papers for "the book" (or what remained of them anyway). My sister and I also had some of the family heirlooms that Mom passed along to us when they moved and downsized several years before her passing. So when we put together all these treasures, we have 12 very large plastic tote boxes full of stuff!

2010 Celebration of Life
After Mom passed away, we decided to have a COL for her and Dad, and for her sister and brother, none of whom had a memorial service at the time of their passing. All were cremated, so no funerals were held. To prepare for the COL, we started going through all the boxes of stuff we had, pulling out things to display and share at the COL.

This was healing for us. We reminisced, we laughed, and we cried together as we remembered and shared stories as we came across old photos and memorabilia. We found love letters that Dad wrote to Mom during WWII. Those were really special and we had no idea they existed. Neither of our parents ever said anything about them. We found letters from the late 1800's written by our maternal grandmother to her brother. We found copies of wills from the middle 1800's and old black and white photos of our dad's mom and her family growing up in the wilds of West Texas at the turn of the century. What a treasure trove for us!

The COL was great and most of our family came as well as the children of close friends of our parents and several of our close friends.. It was a small gathering but important for a family that doesn't "do funerals" or "do reunions". We will have another COL in future for our brother who passed just two years after Mom.

The Journey Begins
So that is what started our journey to chronicle the family history. After the COL, we looked at all those boxes and said, "What next?" We continued to organize, scan and index the documents, letters, photos and other things we came across. We began to read about how to best preserve some of these things, as many of ours were already suffering years of being in a box with little care taken. This blog is not really about "how to" genealogy although I will include some posts about the processes we use and why.

This blog is really about an amazing discovery made along the way. We have found so many people in our family tree what were strong people of Christian faith, both clergy and lay leaders in the Body of Christ. This theme keeps coming up, over and over. That really struck me as something I knew, but then didn't really consciously realize how many there were or what a long time span they represent. So I want to tell their stories, as much as I can put together here so that all our children and grandchildren and great grandchildren will know that their ancestors gave them the most important inheritance you can give: a Legacy of Faith.