Source Transcript; Gilcrest, Robert A. From Gille Chriosd to Gilcrest; Guthrie

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Guthrie.

My mother's name was Guthrie, - Eleanor Guthrie. She was born, December 27th, 1817. The name Guthrie is quite ancient in history, and the name Eleanor is among the first mentions of the family in history. She was the second daughter of Samuel Guthrie, who at the time of her marriage to Father, was living at New Athens, Ohio. The family had come there from Washington County, Pennsylvania. Samuel Guthrie was as carpenter by trade, and one of a family of fifteen children, nine sons and

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six daughters. My mother said one of her uncles had a family of eighteen children.

I have no recollection of the family personally, as I was born after Father moved from Harrison County, to Greene County. I remember some things that came to me by way of the correspondence had with some of the others of the family, especially with Aunt Jane the youngest daughter, a maiden lady who cared for her mother in her old age. Her mother lived to be quite old, if I mistake not, pretty well up in the nineties. She was blind for quite a number of years, but in her last years she could read without her glasses. The first daughter, Mary, married a man by the name of Abraham Brokaw, a farmer. The third one, Sarah, married a man by the name of Joseph Figley, a farmer. The fourth daughter, Eliza, married a man by the name of George Marrow, a farmer. This family moved to the west in an early day and settled in southeastern Iowa. I visited her and her family in Van Buren County, in 1894. She was then a widow in advanced age, and had a large family, mostly farmers, settled in the neighborhood near her home, a substantial home on a rise of ground overlooking the Des Moines River. She is the only one of the family that I remember ever having seen.

Mother had but one brother, the oldest of the family. We called him Uncle Guian, and he seemed to have been quite a favorite with my mother as I recall her conversation about him. He worked at the shoemaker's trade while he was getting a medical education. After that he practiced medicine in Pomeroy, Meigs County, Ohio. He was three times married, but neither wife lived very long. There were two daughters of the second marriage. My last uncertain news of them was that they were

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somewhere in Minnesota. Uncle Guian took service in the army during the civil war as a surgeon, and he died in the service. No picture of my mother was ever secured by any of the family, and the only pictures I have are of Aunt Eliza Morrow [sic? Marrow above] and Uncle Guian. My recollection is that my mother's features were more after the likeness of the brother than the sister. Her health became delicate soon after the age of forty, and about a month past the age of forty-five, she passed on to the home of the soul, January 24th, 1862, near Marysville, Ohio.

Mother's people were of the Scottish Highland origin on both sides of the house. Her mother's maiden name was Shaw, and the Shaw family, in the Highlands were of the clan Chattan, along with the Davidsons, the MacIntoshes and the MacPhersons.

The name Guthrie belongs to one of the old baronial estates in what was once the Earldom of Angus, now Forfarshire, Scotland. The origin of the name is not certainly known, but it is quite ancient and somewhat noted in history. I give the following brief extract's from Warden's History of Angus or Forfarshire:

"The surname, Guthrie, is evidently a territorial one; that is, derived from the lands occupied. The origin of the name, of the name of the parish, is not definitely known. Jervise says, 'It is curious to remark that the oldest spelling of the name of the parish is Guthryn, and that the Gaelic Gath-erran means a dartshaped division; and that by comparison of the outline of the parish of Guthrie on the map with the shape of the old arrow heads, the resemblance will be singularly striking.' The first appearance of the name is 1299 and this Guthrie, in the time of Wallace, played a prominent part in the de-

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