Arnold Seagraves turns 90

Arnold Seagraves

I am pleased to announce:

that the senior member of my California branch of my family,

is having a birthday!

He was born on December 12, 1914.

He will be 90 years young!

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Happy Birthday Uncle Arnold, and may you have many more birthdays!

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Arnold Seagraves, is my Father Johnnie B Seagraves's second oldest brother, and both are from a family of eight children only one of which was a girl! My Aunt Regina.

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Arnold came to California with the family in 1936, later he married his first wife Betty, and with her, he had his four beautiful children; Susan, David, Eli, and Annette. He worked very hard for his family, as a appliance repairman for Sears until his retirement.

Well, he thought he was retired! After a trip to his home state of Tennessee, he returned to Madera to visit his Mom(my Grandma) Hattie Seagraves. She (his mom)had started having fainting spell, and he and his sister Regina were--as well as the rest of the family--very concerned! After being rushed to the hospital, then then another trip to St. Agnest Hopital in Fresno; it was discovered it was her heart, and she would need a pacemaker. Arnold and his only Sister decided right then and there, to take care of their Mother themselves! After an unsuccessful stint as apartment managers, they decided to be mobile home managers, and settled into Vila Capri mobile home park. There they took turns taking care of their Mom, and the responsibility of managing the Mobil home park, for the next nine years! Until their Mother's death in 1985.

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Arnold is fully retired, and now resides in Pleasanton California with his current wife.

His children are planning a wonderful birthday celebration for him.

I am sure "a good time will be had by all!"

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Happy birthday Uncle Arnold!

Have a wonderful birthday!

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I made a correction about the number, and names of Arnold's children.

On advice of David Seagraves, who is Arnold oldest son.

*Thank you David*

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Sir John de Segrave

Sir John Segrave:

This I belive was taken from his tomb.

At his feet is his coat of arms lion,

but I'm not sure what's on his shoulders?

Sorta looks like a pig?

I got this at- http://www.gothiceye.com/pictures.asp?...

I'm sorry the image is so blury. The image was so light

You could hardly see it, and I did what I could with it!

Different spellings of the name Seagraves

There are some 40 odd spellings of our name; some the name just got mis-spelled, usually because of the great many of the early Americans who were illiterate, and couldn't even spell their own name, and would leave a mark! Ususally an X, after someone else wrote their name as it sounded!
Here are some examples as follows:

Segrave

Seagraves

Seagrave

Seagrove

Seagroves

Hargraves

Seagram

C-grave

C-graves

(I'm assuming these last two are typo-os)

Grave

Graves

Which begs a question?

If Graves is actually Seagraves,

did my Grandmother who is a Graves

marry her cousin who was a Seagraves?

But since there are Graves

that are separate from the Seagraves,

maybe not! Anyway I hope not!

(Well anyway! You get the idea!)

There is also what I got called in school!:

Seahorse

Seagram

Seaweed

and

My lest favorite

Sea-snott!

What's in a name? What does Seagraves mean?

I remember wondering since I was little, what does our name mean? Does it mean graves of the sea like my sister Deanna thought? Or does it mean something different?
I think I found the answer to this interesting question:

This next is according to James Seagraves, who has been doing research on our family name for years now. I will paraphase some of what he said, on the Seagraves Family Genealogy Forum. If you would like to read the quote in full, use your search engines and type in Seagraves Family Forum then click on the one marked genalogy.com. That should take you there!

The family name is based on the village of Seagrave or Segrave(the older spelling) in Leicestershire in the English Midlands. (I checked-yep, it's there!) He goes on to mention that the original meaning of the name of the town; is an old English reference to a grove original spelled grave--of trees by a bit of water, known as a Se or Sea.(hence the name Segrave)

It was more common in the middle ages for people not to have family names, as long as they lived in a small farming villages, where everyone knew everyone else. There were too few people to require such distinctions.
William was just William, unless there was two of them. As populations grew and towns became larger, it was nessary to distinguish people better to advoid confusion. William became William the Farmer or William the Mason. When someone left his town he would be known as William of Salisbury or William of Segrave. After the Norman invaded, then French was the lauguage of the rulers. The French version of the word "of" is "de" so he would have been recorded as William de Segrave. Many of our family were known as de Segrave in those early years.

The family described in detail in Charles W. Seagrave's book, "The Seagraves family 1066 to 1935" published in London in 1936, were the nobles and Lords of Segrave, and major landowners in Ireland. (Isn't that cool, we maybe Irish!) Other individuals who lived in the village of Segrave would have probably adopted the "de Segrave" name as well, and have ultimately been ancestors of many of us. Due to the normal lack of written records of the non-nobility, we are not likely to find much of these folks. (These people would have been the so-called "dirt realitives" to the landowners.)