Preface

On January 1, 2008, I sat down at the computer and began writing material for my new project, The James Gammell Chronicles, but the actual genesis was more than fifty years before that. In the early 1950’s my dad, Ray Gammell, began gathering all the information he could about his great grandfather. I have letters with 3-cent stamps on the envelopes that he exchanged with his distant cousins in Montana, as well as letters he received from the Montana Historical Society in response to his inquiries. In 1963, while on a business trip to New York City, he found two small books at the New York Public Library on the origin of the name Gammell. I have his handwritten notes and photocopies of those two books. In the 1970’s he hired Jennie Weeks and Gerald Haslam, professional researchers in Salt Lake City, to search Scottish parish records and LDS Church History archives for any references to James Gammell. (My aunt Nancy Gammell Johnson and great aunt Maggie, Uncle Reed Gammell's widow, shared in the expense of that research.) I have many of the notes Dad scribbled on his Geigy Pharmaceuticals notepaper. On one slip of paper he wrote out a timeline for James’ life. I could see that he was trying to make sense of the information he had gathered. That particular note motivated me most. My goal now is to complete the project that he started those many years ago.

Soon after Dad’s death in 1991, I began transcribing all of the documents he had gathered. I spent many hours typing on a used DOS computer with a black and white screen. Later my brother Phil Gammell updated the format of my documents and distributed them to many family members. From that project I got an overview of James' life and experiences, and a pretty good sense of the time line. I really didn’t discover many of the interesting details, however, until I started doing further research. I also discovered that James reminds me a lot of my dad. Like James, Dad was prone to be motivated to action by his heart, not necessarily his head.

I moved with my husband and family to Ann Arbor in 1987, and until that time I hadn’t realized that southeast Michigan was James Gammell country. I felt like I had returned to my roots. One weekend, while returning from a trip to Chicago with my husband, Steve, and my son Matt, we decided to take a rest stop at the Spring Arbor exit on I-94. I knew that James had lived there, and that his first wife, Harriet, was buried in the Spring Arbor Cemetery. A few miles from the exit we came to a main road (M60), took a right turn, and found the cemetery. We found the oldest section of the cemetery (right next to the road) and started walking up and down the rows of weather-beaten stones. It didn’t take long before we found the headstone of Harriet, “wife of James Gemmell, and daughter of John and Abigail Fitzgerald.” (Spring Arbor Cemetery southwest corner, 4 rows west of the west driveway path.) Recently we revisited Spring Arbor with my brother Mark Gammell and his family and spent a few hours there.

As my research and writing continue, I have been energized by my discoveries. Now I can’t wait to share them with all of you who enjoy my same fascination with Grandfather James Gammell (Gemmell.)