Notes on Our Genealogy

My family moved to Arizona in 1968, when my father's division of Motorola relocated to Scottsdale. Arizona seemed exotic and distant and brand new, so I was surprised to hear that we weren't the first Quaids to live there. And it wasn't even close -- my great-granduncle John Pier Quaid had spent time in Arizona shortly after its statehood in the 1910s. The Ford Hotel in Phoenix, where John Quaid stayed in 1918. Hand-colored postcard, from 1911. John Quaid appears to have led an eventful life, so let's start at the beginning. He was born in Limerick, Ireland to Charles and Mary Neylan Quaid on October 25, 1879. The family called him Jack. He attended the Christian Brothers School on Sexton Street  until he was about 18, which I think shows that he wasn't under economic pressure to go to work early, unlike most of my other ancestors in this period. John Quaid at the Christian Brothers School. He's the one in the top-left, facing sideways. John's father Charles...

 My grandfather Marshall Jackson and his cousin Cecil Ashcraft lived parallel lives. Their mothers were sisters, their fathers were brothers, and both couples married at about the same time. Marshall and Cecil were both first-born sons, born just 6 weeks apart, and they both had just one sister, in both cases 8-10 years younger. Their families were farmers in Western Kentucky, just as they had been for generations. It’s easy to imagine – possibly too easy – that Marshall and Cecil’s lives would have played out similarly, had it not been for the one inescapable What If? difference in their lives: Marshall’s father died when Marshall was still an infant. Wickliffe High School Sophomore Class of 1920 Cecil Ashcraft is in there somewhere. Because of all this, I find Cecil Ashcraft pretty interesting. I know very little about him or his life, but I thought I would record what little I do know. William Cecil Ashcraft was born September 17th, 1900 to William Samuel Ashcraft and Dora Bell...