Family Gathering, 1942

On the back of this photo, Ada has written that it was taken at the home of her daughter, Clara Tyson, in Coshocton, Ohio, just before Ada's elder son Ray Thomas went into the service.

In the back row: Lillian Thomas, Ray Thomas, Ada Thomas, Edwin Thomas.
In the front row: Tom Tyson, Eva Thomas, Clara Tyson holding Gary Tyson, Roland Tyson.

(Reminder: to see any of these photos in more detail, CLICK to enlarge.)

Family Tree

Here is a family tree that I cobbled together. I did none of the primary research; rather, I put together information found on the internet:

http://www.myheritage.com/FP/family-tree.php?s=60935052

The Thomases were German Protestants from Alsace. They emigrated to Muskingum County, Ohio, in the 1850s.

The Gadds are descended from Thomas Gadd, who was born in Hackney (now part of London). Thomas Gadd seems to have been a (minor) criminal - he spent some time in a penal colony in Jamaica. He arrived in Baltimore ca 1668 and married Elizabeth Swaine.

William Gadd (1759-1835) fought in the Revolutionary War.

After moving westward through Pennsylvania to Ohio, this branch of the Gadds intermarried with Kings, Kinneys, Lanes, and Swopes, among other families prominent in the history of Muskingum County.

My grandmother, Ada Ellen Gadd Thomas (1886-1988), was very proud that her father's mother was a Lane. I had no idea why this was so important to her, but now that I've done some research on the internet, I understand:

The Lane family traces its ancestry back to Adam de la Lone, a Norman who came to England with William the Conqueror. The Lanes were prominent both in England (where they intermarried with the Parrs, thus earning a place in the English Peerage), and in the colonial United States (where the first governor of Virginia was Sir Ralph Lane, born 1530).

(A CAVEAT concerning the family tree: fascinating as it has been to trace my ancestry back 26 generations to Richard Fitzgilbert de Clare (1024-1090), I'm skeptical - not because I doubt the historical records that professional genealogists have so painstakingly pieced together, but because modern DNA testing reveals that a surprisingly high percentage of people are in fact not the genetic offspring of their legal fathers. On the other hand, I'm confident that just about anyone living today is indeed descended, in one way or another, from kings and conquerors, soldiers and criminals!)

Cemeteries and Tombstones

Prospect Methodist Church, near both Dresden and Adamsville, Ohio, was founded by the Thomas family. Many members of the family are buried here:


The Gadd family worshipped at nearby Salem Methodist Church. The Salem parish was devastated by strip mining, and the church building was demolished in the 1960s. Still, the graves remain:




If you consult the family tree, you will see that Anna H. (Kinney) and Winfield S. Gadd are the parents of Ada Ellen Gadd, who married my grandfather, Ira Wilbur Thomas.

Although at least one family tree posted on the internet identifies Glenford as a son of Anna and Winfield, he was actually the child of their youngest daughter, Dorothy, and her first husband, Virgil Spragg. (Obviously Anna, born in 1854, could not have given birth in 1916!) Glenford was raised by Anna and Winfield after Dorothy and Virgil divorced. Glenford was only a teenager when he died in a car accident.

They change to a high new house,
He, she, all of them--aye,
Clocks and carpets and chairs
On the lawn all day,
And brightest things that are theirs....
Ah, no; the years, the years;
Down their carved names the raindrop plows.
--from "During Wind and Rain," by Thomas Hardy

Ada and Ira Thomas

Ada Gadd and Ira Thomas were married on March 27, 1910. Ada has written on the back of this photograph that her dress was "steel blue silk":


Ada became a widow when Ira died of cancer in 1934.

Ada in the 1950s: