Been hoping for a long time for some response from this list - perhaps
others will see this now...
My CANTON is Helen Florence born May 17, 1885 in Evansville, Indiana.
This is my grandmother, who died in 1971. She told me when I was a
child that we were Cherokee Indian. Much points to this being Shawnee
Cherokee... but I have no proof and nothing to go on. She was adopted
by William H. and Mary Eva Grismer Sterrett in 1893, when she was eight
years old. She went to some very good schools and was fluent in four
languages. She married well, to a dentist by the name of Garnet F.
Latham whose family was from Lancashire, Wigan, England to the states
around 1870 to Wisconsin and then to Illinois. He left her after their
fifth child, my mother, was born. After researching some of the
information on our family I believe the reason he left her was because
she was found out to be of American Indian ancestry. She had auburn red
hair and what they call Cherokee gray eyes. He was blonde and blue eyed
and all their children had near black hair and dark brown eyes.
Certainly reason to question where the darkness came from.
Grandmother told her family on her death bed about being adopted as a
child and that her given name was Helen Florence Canton before the
adoption. She never used the CANTON name before this. We have reason
to believe that the surname CANTON was her father's and that he may have
been Irish/Shawnee in his heritage and that her mother was full
Cherokee.
Hoping that before my life is over that I will be able to find her
family and restore her dignity that was stolen from her through years of
racial prejudice. Benn searching for the truth of the matter since
1971... Vandenburg County where the city of Evansville lies in Indiana
seems to have "lost" her records. She was reared in the Episcopal
Church and perhaps adopted from there... but no one seems to be able to
locate records to tell us anything. About 1890 there was an epidemic of
tuberculosis in Indiana and neighboring areas of the state of Missouri.
This could be the reason she was left an orphan and adopted in 1893.
Any clues would be appreciated... Leslie
-----Original Message-----
From: Diane Sowden [mailto:diane@sowden8945.freeserve.co.uk]
Sent: Sunday, September 19, 2004 11:56 AM
To: CANTON-L(a)rootsweb.com
Subject: [canton] New administrator
Hiya List,
My name is Diane and I live in the UK, I am your new administrator.
I hope that we will be very happy together.
Diane
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