LAY Family: And the work begins

John David "Big Valley"
Dave Lay (Nancy Lay's big brother)

Nancy Lay (abt. 1768-abt. 1860) is the daughter of Jesse Lay, Sr., who is one of several children of John Lay, who died when young leaving his wife Elizabeth alone. There is so much to the Lay family story and for the genealogists among us, trying to sort through the Lay family as various parts made their way through Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky. There is an extemely short list of names each successive generation used, causing lots of confusion and consternation is sorting them all out. 

Then, I discovered the Lay Family Genealogical Association, Inc., a group who has been operating for many, many years and have several very serious genealogists who have unraveled much of the tree. Unfortunately, and this impression may not be 100% correct, it looks like the active pubhlished work of the organization died out in 2016. The leader of the group, a woman of great skill, died in 2017. Much of this research was published in Lay of the Land, a publication of the group. These are no longer in print. I got a copy from a very generous Wikiteer who also guided me to other sources, including some of his own scholarship.

I am sorting this Lay family information now, but I believe it will take some time to do so.  I also got a couple of resource names that are also out of print: Gilbert Lay's Lay Family Geneaology and Arlie Lay's Lay Family History.

If you have copies of any of these or know where to get them, please let me know by leaving a comment.

Personal Interviews: Saidee Smull Family History

Curtis Williams

Peter Smull > Johnathan Smull > Saidee Smull married Curtis Williams

I've written many letters and emails trying to get distant family members to help me in my quest. Unfortunately, those have mostly been met with deafening silence. One day, I shot off an email to a distant cousin who lived in Minnesota. She is the granddaughter of my great grandmother's sister. Think about that for a minute, I usually need to. She agreed not only to talk to me, but was going to be visiting the area and would meet with me and BRING PHOTOS!  I had died and gone to heaven.

Saidee Smull was the sixth of eight known children of Johnathan Smull and Mary Jane Cooper. She was born 11 Jan 1877 in Bradford, Chickasaw County. She married Curtis A Williams, son of John Williams and Mary Ann Smith, on 09 Sep 1903 in Plainfield, Bremer County, Iowa. The elder Williams' had been born in Indiana and pioneered into Dixon County, Nebraska, before relocating to the Bremer County, Iowa area.

Saidee and Curtis had two daughters, Annie Rosalie (1904), who went by "Rosalie" and Florence Alta Maude (1906), who went by "Maudie." When Maudie was just four, her father died suddenly from typhoid. He was only 35 and a strapping young farmer who took care of his own family as well as his widower father, John.

Life changed significantly for Saidee, but she persevered. She raised her daughters and had a close relationship with several of her sisters and was often found visiting them in Plainfield from Denver. Around 1912, she got more bad news. 

Rosalie, Saidee and Maudie in
Loma Linda, California 1912-1913

Her daughter Rosalie was sick. My interview subject, her daughter, mentioned her mother had been sick and they had gone to California about that time, but she didn't know why - we figured it out while going through the packet of materials she brought. Inside, neatly folded, was a brochure for the Loma Linda Sanitarium where they provided treatment for tuberculosis (among other things). Mystery solved. The girls and Saidee stayed out there for a year until Rosalie was better. Once they grew, both girls became public school teachers.

Saidee never remarried and lived in her later years with her daughter Rosalie and family. Rosalie married a young man named Cloyd Belton, who had arrived in Iowa to work on a road crew building a highway near Denver and never went home. Cloyd was one of eight boys of Marion and Beatrice (Campbell) Belton from Calloway County, Kentucky.  They went on to have my interview subject.  Rosalie died 10 Mar 1990 in and Cloyd died in 1984.

Maudie married a gent named Fred Baker in 1932 in Marshall County, Iowa. They went on to live in Texas. Maudie died Hot Springs, Garland County, Arkansas 30 Aug 2005. They had a boy and a girl.

Maudie and Rosalie Williams