Surname Saturday: McDIARMID

"Scottish: Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac Diarmaid ‘son of Diarmaid’, a personal name said to mean ‘free of envy’ (from di ‘without’ + airmait ‘envy’). Etymologically, therefore, it is the same name as Irish McDermott." --Dictionary of American Family Names (Ancestry.com)

McDIARMID is one of my paternal grandmother's adoptive lines. It is her adoptive maternal grandfather's mother's maiden name. I use the letter "B" after each ahnentafel number to distinguish my adoptive family ahnentafel from my biological one.

Stories and History:

Ahnentafel #180B - John Duncan McDIARMID (dates unknown) - married Euphanie "Effie" McVEAN (dates unknown)

Ahnentafel #90B - Duncan McDIARMID (1799 - 1872) - christened in Killin, Perth, Scotland, he married Mary McPHERSON (1805 - 1876) in 1820 in New York State. They had three known children. In 1842, they were living in Bowne Township, Kent County, Michigan. It is believed they lived there until their deaths.

Ahnentafel #45B - Elizabeth "Polly" McDIARMID (1828 - 1891) - born in Wheatland, Monroe Co., New York, she removed with her parents and siblings to Bowne Township, Kent Co., Michigan, where she married John D. CONCIDINE in 1849. They had nine known children. She spent most of her adult life in Byron Township, Kent County, Michigan. She died of consumption.

Ahnentafel #22B - John Dennis CONCIDINE - (1854 - 1925) - born in Byron Center, Byron Twp., Kent Co., Michigan, John first married Anna Matilda "Annie" HIGBY, with whom he had seven children, five of whom survived infancy. After Annie's death in 1903, he married the housekeeper, Minnie Belle FIELD. They had one son. Three of John's sons from his first marriage moved to Illinois, and John and Minnie moved there in his elder years. He died in Afton Twp., DeKalb Co., Illinois, but was buried in the family plot in Byron Township.

Ahnentafel #11B - Nellie May CONCIDINE - (1883 - 1953) - Nellie was John's only daughter to survive infancy. She became a school teacher, teaching in Kent and Muskegon Counties, the latter being where she met German immigrant Alfred Henry HOLST. They married in 1905, and had a set of twins in 1909, who died shortly after birth. Nine years later, they were finally able to conceive another child, a daughter. After moving from Muskegon County to Wisconsin, then back to Michigan, this time in Ottawa County, they decided to take in a foster child after some shirttail cousins adopted a little boy. The boy's older sister that they fostered was my maternal grandmother. They raised her and considered her their adopted daughter, although like most adoptive families at that time, no legal process took effect...until the underage girl wished to be married. In order to give their consent, they had to be the legal parents, and so Nellie and Alfred adopted my grandmother shortly before her 16th birthday and subsequent marriage the next week to my grandfather. Nellie died at the age of 69, just six months after her husband.

Ahnentafel #5 - Jeanne Marie HOLST (a.k.a. Jane Marie YORK) (1924 - 2011) - my maternal grandmother

Ahnentafel #2 - my father - living

Ahnentafel #1 - myself

More About the McDIARMID Family:

1. Online database (I update this at least once a month): McDIARMID ancestors and relatives (no info on living persons available)

2. Posts about McDIARMID ancestors and relatives on this blog

3. Some scanned McDIARMID documents


My McDIARMID Immigration Trail:

Perth, Scotland > Monroe Co., NY > Ottawa Co., MI > Kent Co., MI > Muskegon Co., MI > WI > Ottawa Co., MI > AK > Stevens Co., WA > Spokane Co., WA

One Day, Two Family History Centers, and Seven Families

Locate residents, organizations, and businesses in America's population centers within city directories.

Thursday morning I had to drive clear across town to drop my son off to meet with his math teacher. He will be an eighth-grader next year, and is taking an online math course this summer so that he can skip ahead two grades to take a sophomore math class next fall at my daughter's high school. His math teacher is teaching a summer school class at the high school on the South Hill of Spokane, about six miles from our home, and had some time to be available for Q&A and assistance with his graphing calculator. Matt had a little more than an hour to work on his lesson, so I thought I would take the time to visit the Southside Family History Center to see what kinds of materials they had available in their facility. We are lucky to have four FHCs in our county, and each one is unique as to the types of microfilms and microfiche they have on permanent loan, depending upon what records their patrons are researching and have ordered from the Family History Library in Salt Lake City.

In the 45 minutes while I was there, I wrote up two pages of notes, chatted with the volunteer on duty, and took a look around the facility. They don't appear to have microfilm scanner/printer software set up on a computer in tandem with a microfilm reader, like the FHC that I usually patronize on the Northside, although they did have several manual readers. They did have a good number of computer stations, more than the Northside does, but many of them were older models. They had a nice selection of books, including passenger lists and immigration indexes. I used their card catalog, organized by country, state or province, and county to see what microforms were available for my areas of research, and was very excited to see they have a large selection of Ontario county records for specific areas I'm researching, as well as some of my ancestral Michigan and New York counties. My son has two more sessions with his math teacher next week, and I plan to return for an actual look at the microfilm, along with my laptop and file folders, for in-depth referencing.

Later that evening, I planned to go to the Northside FHC to work on some lookup requests that had come to me through Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness, when I received a call from the FHC director, notifying me that the microfilm I had ordered only the previous Thursday, had arrived from Salt Lake City that afternoon! We were both very surprised, and I was so excited! Normally, it takes two or three weeks--sometimes more--before I get the microfilm I've ordered. And I was eager to take a look at this microfilm roll, which included the city directories for Grand Rapids, Michigan from 1875/76 through 1879/80. Thanks to Jasia's series, I had gotten enthused all over again to do research in city directories, and decided I would like to have more of these microfilmed records on permanent loan at my local FHC for ease of referral for whenever I discovered a new branch of one of my many Kent County surnames!

My earliest ancestors in the City of Grand Rapids were the TON and VanKLINKEN families, parents of one of my great-great-grandmothers, Jennie (TON) HOEKSTRA. Immigrants from the province of Zeeland, the Netherlands, they had moved to Grand Rapids by 1873 after first spending about 16 years in Cincinnati. Peter, the father, died the following year, and in 1875, Maria, the mother, married a widower with two children, Dirk BYL. Besides Jennie, Maria had two or three other daughters that survived infancy. In the 1873/74 and 1874/75 city directories for Grand Rapids, I had found the TON family, first on Taylor Street and then on Brainerd Street. Looking at the 1875/76 city directory, I did not find either a TON or a BYL family, even though I looked for alternate spellings. Both the 1876/77 and 1877/78 directories, however, listed a "Derk Byle," laborer, who resided at 96 Brainerd, and the latter listed John VanKLINKEN, Maria's brother, a laborer residing at 351 Taylor.

Actually, the 1875/76 directory was of no help, at least at first glance. None of my surnames I looked up appeared that year. The jackpot came in the 1876/77 and later directories, although I ran out of time to look at anything past 1877/78. The 1876/77 directory included a Kent County rural directory, which had my CONCIDINE, HIGBY, McDIARMID, and TUINSTRA families listed!

I also found the household of Beene STUIT at 321 First Street, Grand Rapids, in 1876/77; he was the husband of Catherina DEKKER, my great-great-grandfather Martin HOEKSTRA's half-sister.

I can hardly wait to go back and discover more!