THE GAUNTT-CASE CLANS

I've always been fascinated by my family's history and particularly with some of our more colorful characters who literally blazed the trails of this young country and crossed paths with some of the most noteworthy individuals and events that define the early history of these United States of America.

My 3rd Great-Grandfather, John Miller Camron, came to California by wagon train in 1849, was a well-known Presbyterian minister, and a very close friend and mentor to young Abraham Lincoln who nearly married one of Camron's daughters and became engaged to one of his cousins.

My 3rd great-aunt, Mary Sawyers, crossed the plains from Missouri to California in 1854 with her family at the age of 15.  Their wagon train survived an Indian attack that nearly claimed the life of Mary's older sister.  At the Rough and Ready mining camp in northern California, Mary married a gold miner at the age of 16 and they had a daughter a month later.  In 1857, Mary, her husband and 18-month-old daughter were returning to the East Coast on the SS Central America when it was struck by a hurricane off the coast of Florida. Mary and her child were among the 60 women and children who were rescued. 436 male passengers and crew lost their lives including Mary's husband, Sam Swan.  Mary later joined the Union Army as a field nurse in Pennsylvania during the Civil War and also became a close friend of Chester Arthur, the 21st President of the United States.

My grandfather and namesake, Vernon Case, is another legendary character in our family who arose from abject poverty and barely an 8th grade education, and founded one of the most successful construction companies in the U.S.

This book is a compilation of the several stories I've written over the last several years about my family and its compelling past.  I began to dive into our family's genealogy shortly after our 24-year-old son, James "Jimmy" Gauntt, was accidentally struck and killed by an automobile in August of 2008.   Strangely, I found comfort and healing by looking back.  Healing With History is the title of the first chapter of the book. I realized I wasn't the only one singled out by tragedy. Every one of my ancestors lived hard lives, suffered the loss of children and others they deeply loved, and yet pushed ahead with taking care of themselves and their families and brought new life into this world. I also learned that capturing and sharing our history with my family has brought us closer together and fostered new relationships with distant relatives also hungry to know more about the stories and roots we have in common.

Connecting someone with a piece of their past is perhaps one of the greatest gifts we can give, even if it's someone you don't know.  The chapter, The Letter, includes the story of the incredible gift Emily Sue Buckberry sent to me- a letter from my father--that he wrote 40 years earlier, but did not land in my hands until 3 months after the death of our son.  My father wrote that letter two years before he died by suicide in 1970, and his revealing, comforting and loving words finally found and touched me in a way and on a day that can only be described as miraculous and utterly life-changing.   The Gauntt-Case Clans includes a couple of stories of how I've tried to pay that priceless gift forward by reconnecting some folks I didn't know with important pieces of their history that were gathering dust in my attic.

This book is for my grandchildren, 6th generation Californians, who I hope will also find their family history informative and rewarding, and will pass these stories, and hopefully some of their own, on to their children and the generations to come.

Ancestry.com was so enamored with the incredible story of my 3rd great aunt, Mary Sawyers, they included her in a nationwide television commercial that ran for several months in 2021.