52 Ancestors Week 5: Influencer

Question

From Amy Johnson Crow: 

Week 5: The theme for Week 5 is "Influencer." Although the word "influencer" has been watered down because of social media, all of us have had people who have influenced our lives. This week, write about that person or perhaps someone you know who influenced someone else in your family. Maybe you have a relative who would have been described as an influencer in their community. Don't let me influence how you interpret this prompt!

Wow. Imagine if TikTok had been around back in the day.

Comments

You know even your own family can be influencers: https://allroadhaverhill.blogspot.com/2024/02/52-ancestors-week-5-influencer.html

Answer 1

My Great-grandfather, Albert VanBeuren Shelton, was a Sunday School teacher for 55 years. That's a LOT of influence!

Answer 2

American teacher, military leader, Democratic Party politician, journalist, author, diplomat, industrialist, and businessman. 

On November 25, 1813, he married Miss Lucretia Edwards, sister of Ninian Edwards, who became governor of Illinois.  In 1817, later became Government Printer, and after Jackson became President, was one of his close friends and advisors. He was a member of what is known as Jackson's "Kitchen Cabinet." Jackson depended heavily on him after the Petticoat affair. In the quarrel between Jackson and Vice President John C. Calhoun, he supported Calhoun and, through the Telegraph, violently attacked the Jackson administration. As a result, in his second term, Jackson replaced Calhoun with Martin Van Buren as vice president. My guess is this eliminated any chance of Calhoun ever becoming President. He was influential in the country's affairs even as late as Lincoln's administration during the Civil War. 

In 1840, he established the Pilot in Baltimore to support the Harrison-Tyler ticket. In September 1844, Calhoun, now secretary of state, sent him to Texas ostensibly as consul at Galveston but actually, it appears, to report to the administration, which was then considering the question of the annexation of Texas, on the political situation in Texas and Mexico. 

He was engaged in railway building in Georgia and Alabama.^[2] He was also one of the founding associates in the incorporation of the New Mexican Railway Company. He was attracted to Dalton, Georgia in 1851 by the construction of the East Tennessee and Virginia Railroad from Knoxville, Tennessee to connect with the Western and Atlantic Railroad. He profited by making strategic land purchases. As his wealth grew, he donated land for many public projects in Dalton.

 During the American Civil War, Green organized three iron manufacturing plants for production of iron, nails, horseshoes, and rails in support of the Confederacy. He and his son Ben also established the Dalton Arms Company in 1862.

That is a snippet of one of my other grandma's nephew Duff Green (1791-1875) | WikiTree FREE Family Tree.

Answer 3

My great aunt Phoebe has proven to have been a great "influencer" on how my adult children value animals. She was the original pet rescuer. She is 84 years old in this photo, and she always had about 3 dogs and 7 cats that she kept that she could not find homes for. These are photos of ones that my children especially remember: Rosie calico, Dizzy tabby, Bimbo white with one blue eye and one yellow, Tweedles with black collar and Bonnie lower right.

Both of my children are very involved in rescuing animals and have driven the rescue truck from Tulsa to Minneapolis. They also have several rescue animals that they love dearly. 

Comments

Wonderful story and photos, Alexis.  Bravo to Phoebe (the influencer).

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Pat, thank you for your sweet  comment. My daughter is so very much like Phoebe.

Answer 4

Elizabeth Lanier http://WikiTree.com/wiki/Masson-525 opened Sidney Lanier Camp in Eliot, Maine (located near Portsmouth, New Hampshire) in 1930.  She was the widow of Sidney Lanier Jr., son of the noted American poet and musician Sidney Lanier.  The camp went beyond traditional camp activities to include guest singers, poets and musicians.  The camp was a refuge from the Great Depression for some 120 residents each summer.  It helped my father who was an orphan by age 12.  This is where he developed his love of classical music, his interest in history, nature and science.  I'm certain Elizabeth influenced more lives with her camp than just my father's. 

There's a free space page on the camp which I can't figure out how to link here but there's a link on Elizabeth Lanier's profile page. Below, teaching Morris Dancing as cultural history. Dad said they must have bought a bankrupt theater company's wardrobes because they had costumes for many events.

Comments

Pat, what a wonderful story about your father and the influence of the summer camp.

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Thank you, Alexis.  Summer camps generally are great but this one had a mission to also introduce dance, theater, music, poetry, history and science.

Answer 5

Alas, I don't always see the term "influencer" as positive, because the world is full of negative influences, some of which can turn out to be positive in the end. For example, I was always a high achiever because nothing I ever did was good enough for my dad (until I became an Army Ranger, but that's another story).  My mother was withdrawn and seemed to hate her life and everything in it.  And so on.

Later on in life I heard a radio talk by Chuck Missler who was making the point that science supports the Bible and vice versa. He also noted that the NT is in the OT concealed and the OT is in the NT revealed. As both a lifelong (lukewarm) Christian and an engineer, that made sense.  My wife and I started listening, I started taking his online Bible courses, and after awhile she gave me a wonderful birhday present, a 12-day tour of Israel.  Most of the others were pastors and wives.  Our tour guide was a Messianic Jew who was both an archaeologist and a Yom Kippur War veteran (I had a very small part in that war while in the US Army). As it turned out, it was an eye-opener that Chuck Missler's courses gave me insights that most seminary graduates didn't have (not that all were interested). What I experienced in Israel was the Truth of the Scriptures.

When we got back home, I quit my full-time job as a high-level management consultant (I kept teaching part-time at uni) and devoted the next decade or so to in-depth Bible study, including another tour to Turkey and Greece ("in Paul's footsteps").  I completed all of Missler's Bible study courses as well as masters and PhD studies. I facilitated verse-by-verse Bible study both in our church and through adut ed. right up to COVID, and then switched to Zoom classes until COVID finished.  I have been so blessed by a knowledge of what the Bible really says: for example, it makes sense of the chaos in the world today in a way  that nothing else does. SO was I influenced by Chuck Missler?  Of course, but I would say that I was more influenced by the Scriptures that he broke down in manageable ways.  Thanks in large measure to him, my true influencer was Him!

Answer 6

One of my influencer's was my 5th great-grand aunt Laodicea Langston Springfield.  https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Langston-250

She is a rare amount of women written up in the DAR. She saved her father's life during the American Revolution, as well as the lives of her brothers in a heroic act.

She later married the young officer Thomas Springfield who was going to shoot her father.

She and Thomas had 22 children.

While I was in the military I figured "if she could do it then I could too."

Answer 7

My dance teacher Mrs. Arreola was my favorite high school teacher.  I was shy and clumsy. She helped me to have more grace, self-confidence. I blossomed in her class. I was not the greatest dance but I did my best and she applauded it. I wasn't the only one that became stronger, more confident girls thanks to her.

Answer 8

My answer would have to be my Mormon Pioneer ancestors, especially my 6th Cousin, Brigham Young.

He led the Church after the assassination of Joseph Smith. That was a dark time in our history. My other recently reveled ancestor, William Clayton. He wrote one of my favorite hymns, Come, Come Ye Saints after following Brigham Young to Utah.

Both had a hand in inspiring an entire line of my maternal biological family to join the Church. They would be proud, I think, of those of us that followed in there footsteps.

Another influencer, though on a local level is Charlie Upanhour. He was the sports caster on our local news on Channel 11.

Answer 9

This week I went into the cateogory of United States Inventors to find unconnected people there. I found John Wesley Hyatt. His German Wikipedia page says: "His developments around rolling-element bearings led to the foundation of "Hyatt Roller Bearing Company", which was then bought of William Durant and later integrated into General Motors." He held (again according to German Wikipedia) hundreds of patents.

I was able to connect him to the grandfather of his wife.

Answer 10

In a simple way my grandmother was influenced by her mother Ardell Willoughby. Ardell was 16 when she married a 52 year old man. They had 1 child and then her husband had a stroke and was left paralyzed for the next 21 years. She cared for him completely while also running a large farm by herself. This influenced her daughter (my grandmother) to care for Ardell when she herself had a stroke and was confined to a nursing home. My grandmother went to the nursing home and fed her 3 meals a day for the 4 years she was there. I doubt that would have happened if she did not see her mother do the same when she was growing up.

Answer 11

In my early days, my father and my grandmother Viaretta Neal-Stephens-Hunter were influencers in my life. Middle grade years in school my Grandmother Alice Lucille Coulter-West and my mother were the influencers.  I read the book "The Last of The Mohicans" which gave me an interest in the history of my family during historical periods as they migrated across the lands.  One particular 3rd Great Aunt was Laodicea "Dicey" Langston-Springfield. She saved her father's life, swam the Enoree River in bad storms to forewarn her brothers and save their lives, married the officer who threatened to kill her father until she stood in front of her father, and birthed 22 children from this marriage.