Re: long lost American Estill relatives
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In reply to:
long lost American Estill relatives
2/11/01
I'm not sure if your Emailaddress is still valid, so I also posted this on this forum.
On my search to the person behind the name-giver of our scoutgroup I found the Estill part on the genealogy.com. It really thrills my mind finding the great great grand daughter of Thomas Estill.
In The Netherlands 2 Salvation Army scout groups are active. One of them is my group in Dordrecht (SouthEast of Rotterdam): the Thomas Estill/Schoch de Ravallet group. This group is a combination of the former boys group Thomas Estill and the girls group named after (Henriette) Schoch de Ravallet. The boys group was founded in 1923 as Salvation Army Troup 15 in Dordrecht. After the World Jamboree 1937 in Holland SA Scouting in The Netherlands began to adopt the habits, badges and uniforms of the biggest scouting organisations in Holland. One of the habits was giving a name your group instead of a number. The scout leaders in those days (1939) choose the name of your great great grandfather. Although I don't know the motivation I suspect the interest of your ancestor for youngsters was one of them. The scoutmaster wrote a letter to Thomas's wife Mary to ask permission to use the name of her husband for the Scoutgroup. She permitted this with pleasure and thought it was a great honour to her husband.
We have the translation of the letter she wrote to the SA in Holland, dated April 1940. She also send a portrait of Thomas to be hung in the scouthall. Unfortunately the portrait is lost.
Today we still are a living scoutgroup with children from 4 to 18 years. Although in Dutch you might get an impression on our website www.tesra.nl.
I hope you can help me with some information about your great great grandfather as we only know a little bit about him.
With kind regards,
Albert J. Dijkshoorn
Thomas Estill/Schoch de Ravallet SA Scoutgroup
Dordrecht, The Netherlands