How the branches connect
The descendants and ancestry charts in Albert and Eleanor’s biography connect my father’s Schweickart family with the Howell, Wiseman, and Stewart lines. My uncle John is the author of much of this research. The charts connect the biographies with the earlier generations in the genealogy books.[1]
Schweickart and Turvey
Albert John Schweickart and Harriet Grace Turvey → their son Albert Junior Schweickart.
Wiseman and Stewart
Charles Allen Wiseman and Martha Jane Stewart → their daughter Effie Louise Wiseman.
Howell and Wiseman
Effie Louise Wiseman and Chauncey Howell → their daughter Mary Eleanor Howell.
Albert and Eleanor
Albert Junior and Mary Eleanor → their sons Albert John and Brian Howell Schweickart. The younger John is David’s uncle and the family historian. Brian is David’s father.
The Gates branch
Walter G. Gates is David’s maternal grandfather. A complete maternal pedigree is not shown.
Brian and Cynthia
Brian is my father and John’s younger brother. He and my mother, Cynthia Gates, married in 1978. Brian’s own tribute preserves his memories of learning practical skills and becoming a parent himself. Read their chapter →
Schweickart: Alsace and the Ohio River
John’s genealogy begins in the Alsace countryside and follows nineteenth-century migration to southern Ohio and northern Kentucky. Ripley, Dover, and Ironton recur through the church records, census summaries, maps, and biographies. Marriages brought the Friedly and Turvey histories into the same collection.[2]
The family’s working life included farming, carpentry, contracting, and lumber. The Ironton chapters describe Frederick’s building work and the later lives of Albert and Harriet’s family. The history includes moves and changes in work, along with deaths and remarriages that altered the household. John follows the family through changes in livelihood and household, drawing on records and the stories passed to him.[2]
Frederick and Louisa’s household
Their chapter follows migration from Alsace, Louisa’s Friedly family, farming in Kentucky and the move into carpentry and contracting in Ironton. It also follows Louisa and Margaret after Frederick’s death, with the book’s conflicting dates and uncertain early links kept visible. Read Frederick and Louisa’s story →
Howell: Virginia, Kentucky, and Ohio
The Howell volume follows places as well as generations: Goose Creek in Bedford County, Virginia; Mud Creek in Floyd County, Kentucky; and Sugar Creek and Kitts Hill in Lawrence County, Ohio. Its later chapters bring the story to Chauncey Howell and Louise Wiseman, Eleanor’s parents. Photographs, family documents, maps, and remembrances give the names a setting.[3]
One important connection is expressly uncertain. John explains that Joel Howell’s placement as the son of Stephen and Mary Ann is a logical extrapolation from census and geographic evidence. He sets out that reasoning in the book, leaving the connection open to further evidence.[3]
Wiseman and Stewart: the lines behind Louise
Louise Wiseman’s parents, Charles Allen Wiseman and Martha Jane Stewart, connect the two books with the Buck Creek farm accounts. The Wiseman volume moves through several generations in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Ohio. The Stewart volume brings its later generations into the French Grant and Lawrence County setting. Together they explain part of the family background behind Eleanor’s childhood.[4]
The earliest chapters need the most caution. The Wiseman author calls Thomas Wiseman’s story speculative and contradictory, and identifies the original source of a surname-history essay as unknown. The Stewart volume records uncertainty about early origins and even a later ancestor’s middle name. The source register identifies these unresolved parts of the research.[5]
What the genealogy is for
The later generations bring the branches into the same places and households. Louise Wiseman’s daughter Eleanor married Albert Schweickart in Ironton; their family later moved to Michigan. The chapters on Albert and Eleanor and the Buck Creek farm follow those connections through the people and places involved.