Pannell Peter Genealogy

Captain Thomas Graves Well, our family has been in the country for a long time (for Europeans...)! Before we continue with the Duvall line, I want to report on a branch I just discovered: I'll call it the Pearce-Graves line. For some context: "The Emigrant," Mareen Duvall (1630-1694) [7th great grandfather; NextGen: 8th great grandfather]  came to the North American English colonies (Maryland) from France, via England, around 1655, which is pretty early in the scheme of things. By comparison, the Mayflower arrived in New England 35 years earlier, in 1620. But the earliest permanent English settlement in North America was Jamestown , Virginia, in 1607. Our newly discovered ancestor, Thomas Graves (1580-1635) [8th great grandfather; NextGen: 9th great grandfather]  arrived on the second supply ship, the  Mary and  Margaret , in October 1608, over 400 years ago! (The first permanent European settlement on the mainland of what would become the United States was the ...

  My past blogs have all looked at ancestors and relatives along the Pannell/Langley branch. This is my first entry exploring the Peter/Arrington branch. The tumultuous election earlier in November has inspired me to introduce the multiple Presidents of the United States that also happen to be our cousins. To start, let me state at the outset, that we are not , to the best of my knowledge, related in any way to either Donald J. Trump or Joseph R. Biden! Less than four years ago today, the then-occupant of the White House was our cousin. Growing up, we were always told that we were first cousins of George Washington (President #1). In 2008 we discovered through research that we were distant cousins, as well, of President Harry S. Truman (#33) and then-candidate, Barack H. Obama , who would be elected in 2008 and assume office in January 2009 as president #44. At the same time, it also turned out that we were second , not first , cousins of George Washington. All three of our pre...

  This is the story of how I added 6 generations of Pannells to our family tree. It may offer some insights into how a genealogy detective works.... Prior to my investigations, our family was aware of our Pannell branch going back as far as William Dodd Pannell (1824?-1877?) [2nd great grandfather; NextGen: 3rd great grandfather] , depicted above in a story from the Greenville Leader-News of March 1984 (yes, the date is right—this was a retrospective on TB Pannell published 50 years after his death in 1934). Here is how Ancestry.com describes my descendancy from Rev. William: William Dodd Pannell  1824?-1877?      2nd great-grandfather Thomas Benjamin Pannell 1860-1934      Son of William Dodd Pannell Stephen Lemont Pannell 1889-1931      Son of Thomas Benjamin Pannell Robert Lemont Pannell 1918-1984      Son of Stephen Lemont Pannell Charles Andrew Pannell  [and my siblings]      You are t...

Part 1—The SoCal Years Elizabeth Louise “Betty” Ranum (Pannell) (1926-2020) [aunt; NextGen: grandaunt] would have been 94 today. In our family tree, she was the last survivor of her generation. This is a brief homage to her sojourn on earth. Betty was born on 9 Sep 1926 in Great Falls, Montana. She was the firstborn child of Alton Warren Ranum (1905-1949) and Esther Amanda Rey Bryant  (1904-1996). Shortly after her birth (1927?) the family moved to 1408 Orange Ave. in Santa Ana, California. The 1930 census indicates that Alton was an optician, had been born in Montana, and that his parents had been born in Denmark. Esther had been born in Texas, her father was born in Georgia, and her mother was born in Mississippi. They had married on 8 Jun 1924 in Helena, Montana. Betty's brother, Kenneth Alton Ranum (1933-1996) would be born in Santa Ana. As has been mentioned in an earlier post, the Ranums had moved to 309 S. Garnsey St by the 1940 census, which placed her right next door to th...

The 1930s meant school, sports, and scouting for Bob   Pannell. He graduated from Julia Lathrop Jr. High School on January 26, 1933, according to the Santa Ana Register, and entered the High School. Two days later, he was awarded the Life award by the Boy Scouts of America, in addition to five merit badges. The Register also reports Bob among a group of boys headed to Orange County's Boy Scout Camp Rokili in the San Bernardino mountains (named after the Ro tary, Ki wanis, and Li ons clubs) in July 1933. He probably earned the last of his 21 required merit badges there, as he was awarded the Eagle award on November 18, 1933, aged 15. In the newspaper photo below, Bob is on the far left. Bob is known to have attended at least one event at the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles when he was 14. He may have taken his 9-year-old brother Ben with him. Security and hoopla surrounding the Olympics were much less in 1932 than we are used to. It seems unlikely that the young Pannells could h...

Greetings! At the end of Part 1, Stephen Lemont Pannell had died 24 Oct 1931, leaving his widow Eula to raise her two sons on her own, Bob, 13, and Ben, 8. Social Security hadn't been invented yet, so there were no survivor benefits in those days. I am not aware of any pensions Stephen may have earned through his government service with the Department of Justice.  The family had arrived in Santa Ana by 1929. [I am still looking for more records to establish better when they actually arrived.] Stephen passed the notoriously difficult California bar exam, and was admitted to the California Bar in December 1929 (license #11533), just two months after the stock market crash. It must have been hard for a new attorney to find work at this time. He is listed in city directories alternately as “attorney” and “salesman,” the latter for his brother-in-law’s Langley Oil. A bit more about Stephen before returning to Santa Ana. He graduated from the University of Kentucky (in Lexington—th...