April 7, 2002
Dear Kathy,
It was good to meet you over the Internet and be able to exchange
information about the Quaife family.
The enclosed compact disc has the main part of the information I
have about the Quaife family. I
realize that it may be a case of overkill – please do not feel obligated
to include all of it on your website.
Just include what you think may be interesting and relevant to
other members of the Quaife family around the world.
Most of the information is about my great, great grandfather Albert
E. Quaife, but there is a little bit of information about the origin of
the Quaife name. You can find
this on page 5 of the document Fannie Quaife information.doc
Just to make things clear, I’ll give you my own lineage as it
concerns the Quaife family. As
I said before, my great, great grandfather was Albert E. Quaife.
He was born near Providence, Rhode Island in 1842, and died in
Nashua, Iowa in 1906. He was
the first of his family to be born in the United States.
His parents were John Quaife, jr. and Dianah Moreton.
I have been unable to trace my Quaife ancestry past John Quaife,
sr., who was an officer in the British Army, and who died in 1807.
It is not clear from the records I have whether he died in England
or in India.
Albert Quaife’s first wife was Laura Anna Kenyon, who died
shortly after the birth of the couple’s first child in 1869.
The child was named Anna Laura Quaife.
Albert Quaife later remarried (Barbara Hine) and had 6 children by
his second wife. Much later
in life, he was widowed again, and his third wife was Hattie Cheney
Miller.
Anna Laura Quaife married Edward Winne II, and the couple lived in
Waverly, Iowa. Anna Quaife
Winne also died as a result of complications of childbirth (in 1899),
leaving behind three small children, one of whom, Charles Quaife Winne,
was my grandfather, who was less than 2 years old at the time.
My great grandfather put the three children up for adoption, and a
farm couple in Waverly named Frank and Helen Nichols adopted my
grandfather and gave him the name Charles Quaife Nichols.
My grandfather was known all his life as Quaife Nichols.
Quaife Nichols married Nellie Fox in 1918, and they had two sons,
Frank and Roger; Frank is my father.
Here is the organization of
the materials on the compact disc. The
main directory is Albert Quaife,
and the two main subdirectories are images
and transcriptions.
The images subdirectory contains .tif files of photographs and
documents. The .tif files are
self-explanatory, except for some of the photographs:
The photograph of Albert
Quaife and his sons (Albert Quaife with his sons.tif, under the
directory Albert Quaife photos)
has Albert Quaife in the center of the front row. On the left front row is
Howard Quaife, and on the right is Clarence Quaife, sr. In the back row is
Milo Quaife on the left and Lawrence Quaife, sr., on the right.
The photograph Edward and
Anna Winne family.tif under the directory Anna
Quaife Winne family photos should have this caption:
“On the reverse of this photograph is written:
Nov.
1896
Emma
aged 3 yrs. 6 mos.
Ed,
Annie and Emma Winne
(Edward Winne II)
My
grandfather, Quaife Nichols, was born June 20, 1897. It is quite possible that
Annie Winne may have been pregnant with him when this portrait was taken,
without even being aware of it yet.”
The photograph Anna
Quaife Winne's children.tif under images/Anna
Quaife Winne family photos should have this caption:
“I
have no evidence to support this, but I strongly suspect that Edward Winne
II had this portrait taken of his children after his wife died, and before
he gave all the children up for adoption.
After the children had been adopted, Edward Winne II never saw his
children again. Sadly, this
photograph may have been the only thing he had to remember his children
by.
The
children are, left to right:
Charles
Quaife Winne, (my grandfather), adopted by Frank and Helen Nichols and
renamed Charles Quaife Nichols (was always known as Quaife Nichols);
Lydia
Winne, adopted by Harriet Pratt and renamed Winnie Pratt;
and
Emma Winne, who was raised by her mother’s half-sister, Delilah Quaife
Simonson, and her husband, Charles Simonson, of Stevens Point, Wisconsin.
It
is believed that all of the children were named after relatives.
My grandfather may have been named for Charles Quaife, brother of
Albert Quaife, his maternal grandfather.
Lydia
was probably named for her paternal grandmother, Lydia Chapman Winne.
Emma
may have been named for her paternal aunt, Emma Winne Bowman.
Emma Winne Bowman, in turn, may have been named for Emma Chapman,
her mother’s sister.”
Also under the directory Anna
Quaife Winne family photos is Emma Winne and her aunt Delilah.tif.
The original photograph has written on the back:
“for
Clarence
Lila
Quaife Simonson and niece Emma Winne
Merry
Xmas Dec. 25, 1902”
(Clarence Quaife was the
brother of Lila Quaife Simonson)
The transcriptions subdirectory has Microsoft Word transcriptions of
some of the letters and handwritten documents contained in the images
subdirectory. Many of the
transcribed letters contain explanatory notes about the original
documents.
The letter written by Albert
Quaife in 1879 seems to be written to a former teacher – my records of
Albert Quaife include that he was attending Grinnell College in Grinnell,
Iowa at the time of his enlistment in the Union Army.
The 1897 document is a real gem – it is a first-person account of
one of Albert Quaife’s Civil War experiences.
As it says in the transcribed file, this describes the only known
instance in which an Iowan fighting for the Union met his brother on the
battlefield, fighting for the Confederacy. The 1899 letter by Albert
Quaife was written to his son Clarence.
In it, Albert Quaife tells of the death of his eldest daughter, who
was Clarence’s half-sister, and also my great grandmother.
I have also been able to
find one letter written by my great grandmother, Anna Quaife Winne; this
letter is included in both the images
and transcriptions
subdirectories.
The miscellaneous files
under the Albert Quaife main
directory can be described as follows:
Albert Quaife history.
doc tells a little about Albert Quaife’s immediate ancestors and
some of his descendants.
Albert Quaife’s Civil
War records.doc gives a summary of some of Albert Quaife’s Civil War
records I have found, and also includes the official history of the 28th
Iowa Infantry Volunteers, which was Albert Quaife’s Union Army regiment.
Anna Quaife Winne
obituary.doc is the obituary of my great grandmother, who was Albert
Quaife’s eldest child, and his only child by his first wife, Laura Anna
Kenyon.
Emma Winne Seguin
letter.doc is a letter written by the daughter of Edward Winne II and
Anna Quaife Winne (Emma Winne Seguin was my grandfather’s sister) to my
uncle, Roger Nichols, in which she gives some of the Quaife family history
and her own family history.
Fannie Quaife
information.doc is some information I received from Robert Quaife of
Louisville, Kentucky. Bob
Quaife is the grandson of Clarence Quaife, sr., who was one of Albert
Quaife’s sons. To get technical, Bob is my father’s half- second cousin.
(‘Half” because Anna Quaife and Clarence Quaife, sr., were
half-siblings.) Fannie Quaife
was the granddaughter of Charles Quaife, who was the brother of Albert
Quaife. This would make her the second cousin of my grandfather,
Charles Quaife Nichols. Fannie
Quaife never married; it appears that one of her hobbies was researching
information about the Quaife family.
Fannie Quaife and her grandfather Charles Quaife are both buried in
Greenwood Cemetery in Nashua, Iowa. Parenthetically,
Albert Quaife is also buried in the same cemetery, between his first two
wives, Laura Anna Kenyon and Barbara Hine.
Laura Anna
Kenyon Quaife obituary.doc is the obituary of Albert Quaife’s
first wife, the mother of Anna Quaife, who was my great grandmother.
letter to Kathleen
Nichols.doc is a letter I wrote to my cousin Kathleen Nichols,
Roger’s daughter. I had
visited Greenwood Cemetery in Nashua, Iowa, and I was reporting on what I
had found.
McGregor letter.doc
is a letter my father received in 1975 from a woman living in Nashua,
Iowa, who did genealogical research as a hobby.
She had some information about the Quaife family for us.
A few final words:
if the above address is not current, anyone who wishes to contact
me at anytime in the future may find my current address by contacting the
alumni office at Cornell College in Mt. Vernon, Iowa, class of 1979.
My current work e-mail address is john-nichols@uiowa.edu,
and my current home e-mail address is johnandsara@aol.com
I hope this information is
of some interest and value to you. Again,
please include only what you think may be relevant and interesting.
Thanks very much for all your work in producing and maintainin your
website, http://www.geocities.com/quaifefamilyhistory/
Yours sincerely,
John Nichols
