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| Picture taken during my visit to Leverington Cemetery in 2003. |
In
recent months I have made a little bit of progress on the family tree tracing
back a number of lines a couple of generations and finding out a few additional
details of some of my ancestors. One line that I keep coming back to lately is
that of my great great grandfather, John Uttley. While I never knew much about
this line growing up (and I still kick myself for not talking to my grandmother
about genealogy when she was alive), there has been a lot of progress made in finding
out some of the details.
Last
year, through online research, reading through a variety of books, sorting
through brief mentions in the local newspaper, and calling various city
offices, I was able to piece together a few facts about John Uttley and his
career in the Philadelphia Police Department. It wasn’t much but I was able to
find out that he was appointed to the police
force by Mayor Stokley on May 6, 1876 and assigned badge #596. After
over five decades on duty, he retired from the force in 1931 having reached the
rank of Sergeant. Because the official records for the police department
have long since been destroyed, this is all of the information that I could
find on the career of the man who helped raise my grandmother.
The
same record that provided me with his retirement year, his death certificate,
also listed some very important information… the names of his parents. While I
am still search for additional information on the Uttley line, his mother’s
tree proved to be more fruitful. John Uttely obviously got his longevity from
his mother, Charlotte Noblitt (also found at Noblit, Noblett, and Noblet), as
they both died as nonagenarians. In fact, according to her obituary, she was believed
to be the oldest living resident in Manayunk at the time of her death at age 93
in 1903.
While
death certificates in 1903 don’t provide the same valuable information as later
official forms, her obituary did offer some additional leaves as her father,
Thomas Noblitt, was mentioned as having served in the War of 1812. This is
always great information to find so, with those new details I started looking
for his pension application. Days of searching and nothing was found. Could it
be that the information in the obituary was wrong?
This
happens more often than people realize, when obituaries are written, especially
those authored by non-family members, there are assumptions made. Maybe Thomas
was older than the reporter realized. Maybe it he wasn’t in the War of 1812. Once
I made this adjustment to my search criteria, I found the answers I was looking
for. The pension application and supporting documents from the Commonwealth of
Pennsylvania confirmed his service in the Revolutionary War. Charlotte was
actually conceived later in life long after Thomas Noblitt’s military service… longevity
it obviously part of the Noblitt legacy.
Recently,
I also made an interesting discovery to expand the branches out further in this
line. While attempting to learn more about this line I came across a book, Genealogical Collections Relating to the
Families of Noblet, published in 1906 by John Hyndman Noblit. The surname
was close enough that I had to take a look inside these digital pages and found
that this was our family. Not only does the book contain the basic information
that you would find in any family tree but it also has reproductions of the
actual documents from the countries where the name was once prevalent. While it
doesn’t have everything, it has given me a lot more information to sort
through, digest, and add to this part of my family history. And, just think,
this all started with a desire to learn more about a single leaf.
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