Still More of My Feline Genealogy

Click Genealogy Chart to Bigify

Sorting through more of my local family history, there is, along the "Sweet Pea Kitty" lineage, my great-grammy, Tweetie Pie.  Let's extend that genealogical thread as far back as we can, shall we?

Tweetie Pie's parents were Belcher (male) and Two-Step (female).  Why my great-great-grammy was called Two-Step is anyone's guess.  (I can imagine why her hubby was called Belcher.)  Moving back through many (sadly) nameless generations (but cats whose whereabouts and residences can be verified from the historical record), we come upon one of my ancestors, a kitty named Victor Hugo, who was more commonly known as "Jap Miller's cat."  (Miller's "other cat" was Victor's sibling named Charles Dickens.  This fella liked his literature.  And kitties.)

Isaac Jasper "Jap" Miller (1857-1934) with Victor Hugo (ca. 1900)

(from the Mooresville (Ind.) Times, April 30, 1981)

(Click to bigify)
(See his obituary)

Jap Miller standing in front of "The Jap Miller Famous Store"

in Brooklyn, Indiana (opened in 1897) (photo ca. 1900)

(from the Mooresville (Ind.) Times, April 30, 1981)

His cats, Victor Hugo & Charles Dickens, may be sitting

in the window to the right of the store entrance

Those could be cans of something (probably not tuna-in-oil) in the window of Jap Miller's Famous Store, but they look like kitties to moi.

Enlarged portion of Jap Miller store photo shows two possible felines

in the window to the right of the entrance

Jap Miller was born before the Civil War in Shelby County, Indiana, and subsequently moved to Martinsville (Morgan County) in 1876.  In 1889, the famous Hoosier poet, James Whitcomb Riley, immortalized Miller in verse.  He (Miller, not Riley) became mayor of Brooklyn, Indiana, in 1899, about the time that this photo (above) was taken with Victor Hugo.  Miller had a store (and, purportedly, a residence) in Brooklyn, but he also (perhaps simultaneously) lived in Martinsville.  Busy dude.

Jap Miller was quite a character, by all accounts.  His cats, however, were typical felines:  independent, self-sufficient, hard-working, and massively cute.

Regretably, I am unable to trace this feline lineage beyond Jap Miller's cats.  Their birth and death dates are uncertain, too.  This is the frustrating part of genealogical research.  Only further investigation will determine if we may identify these missing details.

In yesterday's blog posting, we talked about my personal stomping grounds around West Harrison Street in Mooresville, Indiana.  Want to see some photos?  Sure you do.

West Harrison Street (looking west) (June 2012)

between my Library and Miller's Senior Care Community

(click to bigify)

 West Harrison Street (looking east) (June 2012)

near the intersection with South Monroe Street

My Library.  Pretty Much.  (June 2012)

MPL Kinder Garden, or MY Outdoor Hangout (June 2012)

I could tell you all about this end of Mooresville, across which I and some of my ancestors have been dumpster-diving for generations.  Maybe I will in a future blog post.  Local history is Scowl-Face's department, so perhaps I'll order him to make it so by writing some long-winded historical sketch.  I'll warn you first, though.

Why Alienate My Loyal Followers With Scowl-Face's Dronings?
Just Asking,

Cauli Le Chat

MPL Roving Reporter

Genealogy News Beat

P.S.  Thinking of Jap Miller's adopted town of Brooklyn, Indiana made moi think of the Library's book trailer for A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, by Betty Smith.  She was writing about that other Brooklyn someplace out east.  This is Broadway Gal's favorite book, I think.

More of My Feline Genealogy

Click Genealogy Chart to Bigify

On my paternal grandmother's side of my feline family tree, we begin tracing backwards to my Grammy, Sweet Pea Kitty, whose parents were Sugarfoot and Tweetie Pie.  That's as many boxes as this blank genealogical chart has available, but we may continue into the past, if you can imagine box pairs extending backwards along the Sweet Pea Kitty line.  Sort of like nested boxes, only they don't fit inside one another (although I bet they could, if you pushed them a bit).

Sugarfoot's parents were Tiger Paws and Maw Kettlecat.  Then there is a gap in the names along my feline genealogical record--not unusual for us cats, unfortunately--but we have strong evidence that, despite not knowing their names, several generations of this line of my family all lived within a five square mile area that straddles Brown and Madison Townships (Morgan County) a few miles east of Mooresville, Indiana, along what was then known as the Waverly Road (and is now State Road 144).  The closest community "marker" to my "Sweet Pea" ancestral stomping grounds is Five Points, and the Rooker Trace, an ancient settlers' path between Mooresville and Waverly, ran close by.

Early settlers in the area in which many of my

"Sweet Pea" ancestral line worked and lived

from 1829 through the 1890s

(Click to Bigify)

(from Boyd, Gregory A.  Family Maps of Morgan County, Indiana,

Deluxe Edition (Arphax Publ., 2005), pp. 108, 110

Our historical records indicate that, in approximately 1819, the Pennington family settled along the southeast side of what are now known as Pennington and Orchard Roads, but Boyd's maps show this land settled by John Pool in 1825.  My feline ancestors lived and worked on the farms that had been originally settled by  Jesse S. Rooker (1825), the Carpenters (Michael C., John, and Daniel, 1829-1835), Thomas Gregory (1834), and Carlton Grisham (1826).  My "Sweet Pea" lineage ancestors lived in this area for over half a century.  One of these relatives moved to downtown Mooresville in 1877 (more about that, right now, in fact).

In 1877, Jesse S. Rooker's son, Samuel Moore Rooker, who was the first baby born in Mooresville, constructed his home (to replace one that had burned down) along West Harrison Street near downtown (everything was near downtown in those days).  The house still stands at its original location.  In 1877, "Captain" Rooker, as he was known from his Civil War service, had taken Abooksigun (Algonquin for wildcat) (1872-1881), a descendant of Queen Rebekah, one of his father's cats (see more below), from the family farm (near Five Points) to his newly rebuilt house in town.  Several of my "Sweet Pea" ancestry line (from 1877 to the present) have lived in the West Mooresville area.  It's where I call home, much of the time.  I also frequently visit my feline pioneers' "near Five Points" settlements.

Samuel Moore Rooker's new house (1877) with Abooksigun,
his loyal kitty, standing just inside the gate (not visible in this photo)

(from Morgan County Scrapbook, Vol. I [B. Hardin, ed., 1985], p. 285)

Rooker House (2009), formerly owned by

Samuel Moore Rooker's granddaughter,

Helen York Cook & her husband, Claire Cook

Abooksigun's ancestor, Queen Rebekah (1826-1840), was given in 1829 to Jesse S. Rooker as a gift from Samuel Moore, founder of Mooresville, Indiana.  Queen Rebekah was a female "mouser" who had earned a reputation for clearing rodents from grain storage buildings.  Her grandfather, Hippolyte (1817-1828), travelled with the Moore family from North Carolina when they migrated to Indiana (in 1819), and (in 1822) Hippolyte accompanied Samuel Moore when he moved to Brown Township in Morgan County.  Mooresville was founded in 1824.  Hippolyte, then, could be considered a "founding feline" of my hometown.

We have no artist renderings of Hippolyte, but we do have a reenactor photo showing my feline pioneer ancestor.

Reenactor photo of Hippolyte, my feline pioneer ancestor, as

Hippolyte may have looked on the Moore family's northern migration

to and within Indiana (1819-1822)

Who said feline genealogy was any easier than it is for people?

Proud to Have Pioneer Roots,

Cauli Le Chat

MPL Roving Reporter

Genealogical News Beat

P.S.  My Library's book trailer for Pioneer Cat (1988), by William H. Hooks and Charles Robinson (illustrator), includes the coonskin capped feline photo above.  The book is available in our online Evergreen Indiana catalog.

P.P.S.  Family legend says that Hippolyte was an all-grey kitty, like the pioneer cat above.  This reminded moi of "Grey Sky Eyes," by Carbon Leaf, from the group's debut album, Indian Summer (2004).

My Feline Genealogy

Feline genealogy is difficult to determine, given the lack of written records and the liberality of roaming Toms.  But our keen sense of smell tells us when a relation is near--we're sniffing a scent gland back there, by the way--so we often know family when we --er-- smell them.

Being in charge of my Library's Indiana Roving Reporter Room, I have access to all of the Library's genealogical resources, which, admittedly, concentrate upon people.  Still, with a little creative researching and the right kind of insight, I was able to trace some of my genealogy.

Loyal readers already know one of my relatives, the late Jules Le Chat.  Jules was my auntie.  The family tree back to her looks like this.

Click to Bigify Genealogy Chart

My parents (Père & Mère Le Chat, each age 13) are on the same generational level as Jules. My Mère was Jules' sister.  My maternal grandparents, who are still living (at ages 16 and 17, respectively), were named Matou & Minou Le Chat.  Not surprisingly, as feline families tend to be close-knit, so to speak, Matou's brother, Delmar Le Chat, was my paternal grandfather.  Delmar's placement on the chart isn't quite right, but it's a blank form chart, so I'm stuck with it.  Delmar should be connected to Matou's parents.

You may be curious to know when my French feline relations arrived in America.  You have to go back several generations, but the Le Chat line runs through my maternal ancestry.  In 1926, Cyrano Le Chat, Ship's Cat First Class, sailed on the newly-constructed French passenger liner, S.S. Île de France, which was the first post-World War I French vessel to exceed 40,000 tons.

S.S. Île de France (1926)

Cyrano disembarked in New York City to requisition canned tuna-in-oil for his feline shipmates when he was abducted by a sixteen-year-old American girl from Brooklyn, Clarice Monsanto, who was at the docks awaiting her grandparents' arrival on another ship.  Clarice assumed Cyrano was a stray who needed a home.  So, like it or not, he had one, in which he eventually settled down.  One of his offspring's grandkitties, Renne Le Chat, accompanied Clarice's daughter, Midge, in her move to Plainfield, Indiana, in 1959 (her husband, Walter Padgett, worked for F.A. Wilhelm Construction Co. in Indianapolis).  Midge's son, Paulto, moved to Mooresville in 1983, bringing another of Cyrano's descendants, Parfait Le Chat.  Matou Le Chat was one of Parfait's descendants, which means so am I.

Hand-tinted photo of Clarice's mother (right) and

grandmother (left) with Cyrano Le Chat (1931)

(photo by Clarice Monsanto)

Clarice Monsanto holding Renne Le Chat,

descendant of Cyrano Le Chat, at

Midge's home in Plainfield, Indiana (1961)

Parfait Le Chat (the grey & white kitty on the right)

with several of Paulto's feline family (1985)

My Hoosier roots are quite extensive, too.  If you trace my genealogy through Sweet Pea Kitty, you will be surprised how far back my lineage goes, and who my ancestor's human companions were.  More about that in an upcoming blog.

Proud of My Family History,

Cauli Le Chat

MPL Roving Reporter

Genealogy News Beat

P.S.  My Library has a promo trailer for researching your family history and genealogy in libraries and historical archives.  Everyone should know her/his roots.  We stand on the shoulders of those who came before, so knowing them gives us insights about ourselves.  Visit the MPL Indiana Roving Reporter Room for more information about our local, county, and state history, as well as genealogical resources.