Hacienda Circle: Birthday Bio -- Mom -- Lavinia Cresap, Mrs. John B. Gilbert 16 June 1915

16 June 2011

Birthday Bio -- Mom -- Lavinia Cresap, Mrs. John B. Gilbert 16 June 1915 - 10 Dec 1997

She was the oldest of four children born and raised in the Phillipines.
She matured very fast -- pictured here she is only 10 years old, her sister, Florence on the right is only 2 years younger. left to right: Ida May, Lavinia, Andrew Bruce, Florence Cresap
She grew to be nearly six feet tall, had the carriage of a queen, but was a bit of a trickster.
She always seemed like a fairytale figure.
She could play harmonica, stand on her hands, make the best billy goat cookies and grape jelly.
She learned to fly a plane in the 1920's landing on dirt fields and soloing over Clear Lake.
She was the first in her family to go to college -- University of California, Berkeley class of 1936.
She managed to be at great world events -- the 1936 Berlin Olympics where she saw Hitler, Mussolini's Italy, and Pearl Harbor the day it was bombed.
She stood up against McCarthyism, helped establish the first Orinda library, volunteered at Contra Costa County's juvenile hall, and was on Cal's scholarship committee.
She was an active member of St. Stephen's Episcopal congregation in Orinda and the DAR.
She was an independent voter.
She was a founding member of the first book group I ever heard of back in the 1950s.
She was clever with her hands -- a terrific seamstress and weaver.
She loved to sail.
She was rarely idle, and each Christmas her Wizard of Oz and angel figures adorn our tree.
She raised four rascally children while her husband traveled at least half the time for his job.
She loved her grandchildren and kept the freezer full of popsicles.
She is missed every single day.

Happy Birthday, Mom!

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Note to Gilberts

All the ancestors posted on this blog belong to us all. Hacienda Circle lives. It is a place of our present with Jack & Roxanne there now, and it is a window into our past.

We are true American mutts -- a mixture from England, France, Scotland, Ireland, Holland, and Germany.

Our DNA will, no doubt, reveal more counties of origin. I'll be adding information about this as I gather and understand it. but we already have two 37 marker matches (one with a Frank M. Cresap -- no surprise there!).

1. Thank you, Jack, for doing our Gilbert DNA.

2. Thank you, Karen (Cresap) Bach, for having your late father, Andrew Bruce Cresap, Jr., do our Cresap DNA.

3. Thank you, Maurice Walton, for doing our Walton DNA (via Granwilla's maternal grandfather, James Walton's line).

4. I did our mitochondrial DNA back through Mom, Pi, and our direct female line back. This line is also included in a family finder project at https://www.familytreedna.com/. This works by comparing our autosomal DNA to that of other people who have taken the test through FamilyTree. Our relationship with a match is calculated based on sharing linked segments of DNA. Although any two people from the same population may have some of their DNA in common, as a matching segment of DNA becomes longer and we share more segments, it becomes more likely that the sharing is due to a recent common ancestor than a chance match. Thus far we have five people who we are probably 4th cousins with, but we haven't figured out the exact connection.

Happy ancestoring!