Beginnings
This page has information on the ancestors whom I remember, or of whom I can get meaningful first hand accounts. Unfortunately, that's only my grandparents. For information about the earlier generations, see my Thomlinson family tree page. It goes back to 1805, and has links to the information I have accumulated on Thomlinsons, Turgeons, Phillips, Smiths and Waites.Father's Side
Myrtle Turgeon
Myrtle Turgeon, 1888-1951, my paternal grandmother.
Myrtle Turgeon's mother, Uncle Bruce and Dad's Grandmother , was Abi Pike, born c. 1850, (perhaps?) distantly related to Zebulon Pike. The story is that the relation was close enough that Abi knew that the Pike women-folk thought that Zebulon was a low-down, no-account drifter who abandoned his wife to go exploring.
Abi Pike married John Turgeon c. 1890 (probably before 1888?), of French Canadian background (left Canada a long way back, perhaps 1790?).
The Turgeon family was in Louisa county, Iowa, for many years. Myrtle's mother Abi married another civil war veteran (implying that John Turgeon was a veteran?) after her first husband (Turgeon) died. There were no children by this marriage.
Myrtle Turgeon had a brother, Bertrand Turgeon, who married Margarite Sellars (or Sellers?), and had three children: Peggy Ann, Tommy, and a little girl, from oldest to youngest.
Abi's greatgrandmother told her that her (the ggmother's) family came up (to Iowa?) from the Ohio country (pre-Ohio-statehood).
James Harrison Thomlinson
James Harrison Thomlinson, my paternal grandfather, born c. 1896 in Joplin, Missouri, married Myrtle Turgeon (probably c. 1920?), left the family c. 1931, died in California in 1975, at 78 years of age. He worked in a lead mine in Pitcher, Oklahoma (or in the Picher lead deposits, perhaps in Franklin county, Kansas?) before his marriage.
James Harrison Thomlinson and Myrtle Turgeon had two sons: James Conway Tomlinson, born 1922 and Bruce Tomlinson, born 1926. Both were born in Wapello, Iowa, in Louisa county. Their birth certificates were filled out by the same doctor, and their family names were both written ``Tomlinson'', so apparently the doctor was a Cockney. About 1936, they discovered that the family name had been mispelled on the boy's birth certificates, and so Myrtle decided that it would be simpler to change her name to match theirs, rather than changing both their birth certificates. She and her two sons became ``Tomlinsons'' rather than ``Thomlinsons''.