More Groundbreaking News

The St. Tammany Parish School Board has given me permission to publish items from its website about the groundbreaking for the Joseph B. Lancaster Elementary School.
Here are images of the design, including a 3-D rendering of the plan:



The groundbreaking:



The article from the school board website describing the groundbreaking:

Groundbreaking Ceremonies Held For Lancaster Elementary
(10-16-2009)
School System officials and members of the Joseph B. Lancaster family took part in ceremonies to break ground for the new Lancaster Elementary west of Madisonville Friday morning, October 16. The new school, located between Pine Creek Drive and Perrilloux Road off Hwy. 22, will bring 47 additional classrooms to the fast growing southwest St. Tammany area.

Lancaster was the first officially-recorded superintendent of the St. Tammany Parish Public School System and was known for his vision of an educational system designed to meet the needs of a growing area. A number of Lancaster ancestors, some from out-of-state, attended the groundbreaking.

Gasaway-Gasaway-Bankston of Hammond is serving as architect for the project, with Donahue-Favret Contractors building the $18.3 million facility. The total square footage of the two-story building will be 104,814. The new school’s grade configuration will be grades two through five.

The event took place two weeks after the groundbreaking ceremonies for a new elementary school in the Slidell area, the Henry Mayfield Elementary off U.S. 190 near Tammany Trace.

The School Board agreed last year to name the new Madisonville area elementary school in honor of Lancaster after Superintendent Gayle Sloan recommended him for the honor. She recounted his many contributions to the community as lawyer, district attorney, judge, and state representative. “He was a very high-achieving individual,” she said. He was named Superintendent by the first School Board in September of 1900, after it became an organized set of schools with parishwide administrative supervision and community governance.

Five descendants of Lancaster attended last year’s School Board meeting to name the school after their ancestor, including Lancaster's grandson, Judge Peter Garcia of the 22nd Judicial District. “Lancaster was a grandson of General David Bannister Morgan, who fought in the war of 1812 with Andrew Jackson and who is buried in Madisonville. So it is appropriate to name a Madisonville area school after him, since he has very strong connections to the Madisonville community,” Judge Garcia said.

Lancaster served as Superintendent of Schools until September, 1904, and died in 1916 in Franklinton.

Groundbreaking of Joseph B. Lancaster Elementary School, Madisonville, La.

In recognition of Joseph B. Lancaster's contributions to public education in St. Tammany Parish, the School Board voted to name the newest school in the parish for our ancestor.

The groundbreaking was held Friday, October 16, 2009.

See the article from the Times-Picayune describing the event and the photos taken there.

The following descendants of Joseph B. Lancaster attended the event (in parentheses is the familial connection to Joseph B. Lancaster):

Joseph B. Lancaster, who many of us know as Bradford Junior (grandson, as son of Joseph B. Lancaster, Jr. -- Uncle Bradford)
Willie Mae Lancaster (granddaughter-in-law, wife of Bradford Junior)
Marcy Lancaster Simoneaux (granddaughter, as daughter of Joseph B. Lancaster, Jr. -- Uncle Bradford)
Frank Simoneaux (grandson-in-law, husband of Marcy)
Charles D. Lancaster Jr. (grandson, as son of Charles D. Lancaster -- Uncle Charlie)
Dee Dee Lancaster (great granddaughter, daughter of Charles D. Lancaster Jr.)
Charles D. Lancaster III (great grandson, son of Charles D. Lancaster Jr.)
William B. Lancaster (grandson, as son of Charles D. Lancaster -- Uncle Charlie)
Edith Garcia Eason (granddaughter, as daughter of Edith Lancaster Garcia -- Aunt Edie)
Melie Garcia Freret (granddaughter, as daughter of Edith Lancaster Garcia -- Aunt Edie)
Michelle Prather Freret (great granddaughter, daughter of Melie Garcia Freret)
Suzanne Freret (great granddaughter, daughter of Melie Garcia Freret)
Yvonne Garcia Crawford (granddaughter, as daughter of Edith Lancaster Garcia -- Aunt Edie)
John Crawford (grandson-in-law, husband of Yvonne)
Peter J. Garcia (grandson, as son of Edith Lancaster Garcia -- Aunt Edie)
Linda P. Garcia (granddaughter-in-law, wife of Peter)
Meghan Garcia (greatgranddaughter, daughter of Peter and Linda Garcia)
Elizabeth Garcia Smith (granddaughter, as daughter of Edith Lancaster Garcia -- Aunt Edie)
Dale Smith (grandson-in-law, husband of Elizabeth)

Here is a picture taken after the groundbreaking at the School Board facilities, where the family was invited for lunch.



[Photo courtesy of Margaret Sharp, St. Tammany Parish Schools]

Two Items of Interest

First Item of Interest

In searching for the Morgan connection to Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, I discovered a Lancaster connection. We have a common ancestor, Robert Brooke. (I imagine if you go back far enough, you can find that with just about anyone.) Taney was the son of Michael V. Taney V and Monica Brooke. Monica Brooke's father, grandfather, and great-grandfather were all named Roger Brooke. Roger Brooke the great-grandfather (1637-1700) married Dorothy Neale (1646-1680). The Neale name arises in our ancestry, too, but that isn't the immediate connection. Roger Brooke's parents were Robert Brooke (1602-1655), a colonial governor of the Maryland colony, and Mary Mainwaring (1610-1663). They married on May 11, 1635, one year after the death of Robert Brooke's first wife, Mary Baker (1607-1634). Robert Brooke and Mary Baker are our ancestors. Their son, Baker Brooke (1628-1679) married Anne Calvert (yes, a descendant of the founder of Maryland; 1644-1714). Their daughter, Mary Brooke (1680-1763), married Raphael Neale (1683-1743). Their daughter, Elizabeth Neale (1704-1762) married Captain John Lancaster (1673-1760). Their son, Raphael Lancaster (1732-1802), married Ellinor (Eleanor ?) Bradford (1735-1802). Their son, John Lancaster (1766-1838), married Catherine Miles (1772-1847). They had twelve kids. Their eldest, Joseph B. Lancaster (1790-1856), was our grandfather's grandfather.

It is worth noting that the Taney-Brooke family stayed in Maryland through all of the births and deaths listed above. (That is, after Robert Brooke moved to Maryland at the behest of Lord Baltimore to command a new county, Charles County. Robert Brooke's first wife -- our ancestor -- had died in England. His second wife and all of his children and servants -- 40 in all -- sailed to Maryland in 1650 [source: Pennsylvania Society of Colonial Governors, Volume 1, copyright 1916, accessed through Google Books.com.])

In the same span of time, our branch of the family closely parallels the history of our country after Independence. Raphael Lancaster moved with his family to Bardstown, Kentucky, as part of the massive migration of white settlers to what was then called the West -- the trans-Appalachian region settled after the Revolutionary War. His son John was captured by Indians. Read the account in the old family history that Bradford Lancaster and Edith Lancaster Garcia prepared for the 1976 reunion in Covington. That capture, too, is reflective of our nation's history as Indians in the Ohio Valley opposed white settlement and fought it until the Indians were driven out by war, disease, and forced migration.

John's son, Joseph B. Lancaster, led a company of Kentucky calvary intent on fighting the British in the War of 1812 in the Great Lakes theater. By the time the company arrived in Detroit, the war had ended. As noted in the recent blog entry, Joseph and his family moved to Florida from Kentucky, perhaps at the urging of a friend from Bardstown, William Pope Duval. A more encompassing reason may have been why many Kentuckians and Tennesseans moved to Florida -- General Andrew Jackson became military governor there after Florida became part of the U.S. Later, Joseph B. Lancaster fought against the Seminole Indians. He was wounded in the neck and retired to the less dangerous combat of politics.

William B. Lancaster, Joseph's son, is responsible for the Louisiana origins of the Lancasters. He had moved with his family to Florida from Kentucky, attended school at St. Joseph's in Bardstown then the University of Paris where he was converted to Catholicism by Frederick Ozanam. As many of our family know, William brought the Society of St. Vincent de Paul to Louisiana, where he organized a branch in New Orleans. His reasons for coming to Louisiana may be related to his work for the Society. Please see the plaque to Ozanam posted here that is in the church adjacent to the University of Paris, St. Etienne du Mont. The plaque is on a wall perpendicular to a side altar dedicated to St. Vincent de Paul. The photo was taken by a French woman as a favor to my sister, Edith Garcia Eason. Were it not for Ozanam, might we have all grown up in Florida?

Second Item of Interest

While looking up some of the above information, I found that the wife of Joseph B. Lancaster (our great-great-grandfather, not our grandfather), Ann Blair Lancaster, is buried at Arlington National Cemetery. She was living in Washington, D.C., at the time of her death in 1890. Burial there was due to her husband's service in two wars. Also buried in Arlington is William B. Lancaster's sister, Laura Louise Lancaster Vincent. As the 1976 history records, she was also converted to Catholicism and studied at the University of Paris. She married U.S. Army Lieutenant Thomas M. Vincent, who served as assistant adjutant general during the Civil War on the Union side. The fact that his brother-in-law, William B. Lancaster, was a member of the medical corps of the trans-Mississippi department of the Confederate Army is another specific example from our family of a larger historical trend, this one of how families were split by the Civil War. Vincent had become a brigadier general before his death in 1909. He is also buried in Arlington. He and his wife are in section Z -- she in 175LH, he in 175RH. I intend to contact Arlington National Cemetery's Freedom of Information officer to find out where Ann Blair Lancaster is buried.

As promised, here is a speculative musing by Peter Garcia on the relationship of Andrew Jackson to the Lancaster family:

When Judge Sonia Sotomayor was appointed by President Obama, there was an article in The New Yorker about the evolution of choices of Supreme Court justices. At one time, the President made appointments that had a geographical basis. The appointments to the Supreme Court later evolved to have ideological foundations and, lately, gender and ethnic considerations.

The author wrote that in 1836 Andrew Jackson appointed Roger Taney to the Supreme Court, making Taney the first Roman Catholic justice. I had remembered that our family is related to Taney, through General David B. Morgan, our grandfather's grandfather (David B. Morgan's daughter was Joseph B. Lancaster's mother). I wondered about the relationship between Jackson and Taney: Were they connected through Morgan? Jackson and Morgan were fellow defenders of New Orleans during the War of 1812. Who introduced Jackson to Taney? Did Taney come to have a seat on the Supreme Court of the United States because he was related to our great-great grandfather?

Peter refers to the June 8, 2009 article by Jeffrey Toobin entitled, "Diverse Opinions." If anyone finds more information about this topic, please submit it! Meanwhile, I will research the issue, too.

JOSEPH B. LANCASTER, "The comfort and pride of his family"
Joseph B. Lancaster (father of William B. Lancaster and grandfather of Joseph B. Lancaster of Covington, Louisiana) was a member of the Supreme Court of Florida. His career is described in The Supreme Court of Florida and its Predecessors Courts, 1821-1917, published by University Press of Florida in 1998.

Born in Kentucky around 1790, Joseph B. Lancaster was the son of John and Catherine Miles Lancaster. He read law and won admission to the Kentucky bar. He practiced from offices in Bardstown and Lebanon. In 1815, he married Annie Blair, the daughter of a Presbyterian minister. They moved from their hometown of Bardstown to St. Augustine, Florida, in 1822. The book speculates that Joseph's connections to a Bardstown friend, William Pope DuVal, brought him to Florida. DuVal became territorial governor of Florida that year. He appointed Joseph to become assistant secretary of East Florida's board of land commissioners. In 1825, Joseph was admitted to the bar of the the territorial court of appeals and appointed to the legislative council.

Joseph had other connections in Florida that smoothed his way in territorial politics. As time passed, his appointments and elections brought him greater responsibility through much of eastern and central Florida:

1826 -- appointed justice of the peace of St. Johns County (St. Augustine)

1827 -- appointed judge of Aluchua County (Gainesville)

1831 -- President Jackson appointed him the first collector of the Port of St. Johns in Jacksonsville

1833 -- elected chief clerk of the territorial council, the governing body of Florida

1839 -- elected by Duval County (Jacksonville) to the territorial house; served in 1840, 1842, 1843, and 1844. During the last two years, he presided over the house

1846 -- elected mayor of Jacksonville

1847 -- elected to the territorial house of representatives; the Whig majority elected him speaker of the house; his son, William B. Lancaster, was chosen as chief clerk. A resolution directed lawmakers to wear red roses on their left shoulders and christened the house chamber as the "House of Lancaster."

December 1847 -- elected judge of Florida's southern circuit; by right of law he sat on the Florida supreme court until 1850. Joseph continued to serve as circuit judge until 1852. His political enemies feared he would be a "political judge," but one opponent described him "as unswerving, impartial, prompt, discriminating and sagacious a Judge as he was conceded to have been as Speaker."

1853 -- lost reelection in Florida's first popular judicial election (previous elections were held in the house)

As a member of the Whig Party, Joseph lost power as the Whig Party drew its last breath in the state elections of 1852. He joined the American or Know Nothing Party although he rejected two well-known tenets of the party -- anti-Catholicism and anti-immigration. In February 1856, he ran and won the first election for mayor of Tampa. Joseph died November 25, 1856.

Ossian Bingley Hart, a future justice and governor of Florida, was Joseph's protege. After Joseph's death, Hart summarized his mentor's career in the Tampa Florida Peninsular: "Blest with a high order of intellects, with a heart full of kindly feelings, he was the comfort and pride of his family, the ornament of every social circle in which he mingled, and was eminently useful to the people of our State. As a lawyer few were his equals in point of talent, and in fidelity to those whose interests were in his hands; and, as a Judge, none more anxious that justice should be done. To say that he had none of the frailties of human nature, would be to call him perfect, which no man is, but I think I can truthfully say that he had less of those frailties than most men."
Next post: Andrew Jackson and the Lancasters

Using the research process that I described at the reunion--finding the existence of documents through ancestry.com--then obtaining those documents, I have new information about Charlie Doerr, our grandmother Amanda Doerr Lancaster's brother.

I found that his obituary was published by the Birmingham News on March 3, 1937. The obituary for his wife, Lucie Ellermann Doerr, was published in the same paper on April 7, 1943. I got copies of the obituary from the Birmingham Public Library's Government Documents Department. Here are some of the facts that those documents contain:

Charlie Doerr was not Charles J. Doerr, Jr. He was Charles Thomas Doerr. After moving to Birmingham, he worked as the purchasing agent for the Birmingham Electric Company. Then, during World War I, he served the U.S. at the government nitrate plate at Muscle Shoals, Alabama. After the war, he returned to Birmingham and became purchasing agent for the Alabama Power Company. By the time of his death on March 3, 1937, he and Lucie had only two surviving children -- Hazel and Lucille. Their other daughter, Lucie, had died before the 1910 Census. Their son, Charles, apparently died at some point between 1910 and 1937. Lucille, in 1937, was married to Joe Duncan and had five children, according to the obituary.

Lucie Ellermann Doerr's obituary reveals that she was the daughter of Henry Ellermann, "a prominent Louisiana contractor who built the Mississippi River levees at New Orleans." I would need to do research to confirm that description of her father. Her obituary also names her grandchildren, the children of Lucille Doerr Duncan: Marie Duncan, Doris Duncan, Joann Duncan, Joe Duncan, Jr., and Mrs. Paul Reuter. I have begun searching for them and their descendants. They may enjoy having a copy of a picture of their grandmother Lucille Doerr Duncan, the little girl sitting in the chair in the picture on this page.

One final note of interest from Charles T. Doerr's obituary. The newspaper account says that he was a resident of Birmingham for 33 years upon his death in 1937. That would mean he moved in 1904. Perhaps the photo is a record of a visit of Charlie and his family to Covington from Birmingham.

The William Lancaster House on Lakeshore Drive in Mandeville is part of the Historic Homes tour to be held Saturday, May 16, as part of Mandeville's 175th anniversary celebration. Historian Sally Reeves conducted a survey of Mandeville homes and rated each house's historic importance. I talked briefly to Gloria Coker, the home's owner, who was busy getting her house and yard ready for the tour. She said she keeps a book of information begun by the previous owner of the house, Mrs. Colvin and adds to it as she finds out more about the house and its owners. The William Lancaster that owned the home was William B. Lancaster, the half-brother of Joseph B. Lancaster. 

We agreed to exchange information next week after the anniversary. Look here soon for a description of our conversation.