September 25

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO...

Noel Joseph Dunn 1904-1904 (age 3 months)

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY TO...

Joseph Calvin Dunn and Mary Leona Williams 1926

Since there were two Dunns mentioned in today's family calendar, I decided to try to suss out exactly how the Dunns are related to us. It is a commonly recurring name in the family history records on the Carter/Arnold branch of the family tree.

Noel Joseph Dunn was the son of Lewis Albert Dunn. Joseph Calvin Dunn was the son of Berton Sylvester Dunn. Lewis and Berton were both sons of Mary Elizabeth Carter and Lewis Calvin 'Luke' Dunn. So Noel and Joseph were 1st cousins.

Photo: Mary Elizabeth Carter Dunn

Mary Elizabeth Carter Dunn was a half-sister to my great-great-grandmother Adaline Carter Arnold.

(Just an aside -- Mary Elizabeth Carter and her brother James Wesley married siblings Lewis and Rebecca Catherine Dunn. I'm finding that it was a very common occurrence back in the day for siblings from one family to marry siblings from another family.)

 Mary Elizabeth Carter and Lewis Calvin Dunn had nine children:

William Jones 1876-1951

Montillion Boston 1878-1952

Lewis Albert 1881-1967

Berton Sylvester 1883-1972

Arthur James 1885-1971

Vergie Bernette 1889-1891

Ira Otis 1892-1958

Lillie May 1894-1975

Charles Dewey 1898-1898

All but two of their children survived to adulthood. That's a pretty good record for those days, when so many children died of diseases or complications of childbirth.

For as many Dunns as there are in the family, I don't have very many pictures of them. Here's what I have:

Photos: Boston Dunn and John Martin Carter. (I don't know for sure which is which. I tried to compare them to another picture of the two of them when they were older -- the bottom picture -- but I'm still not sure.)

Photos: Mary Elizabeth Carter Dunn and her youngest daughter Lillie. (The handwriting on the left photo is that of my great-grandmother, Annie Arnold Hicks. Lillie was her cousin.) Right is another photo of Lillie.