A man named Drumheller is on a journey to trace and document his roots and made the logical stop in the valley.
Wayne Drumheller and his wife Linda were through the valley last week. The writer and photographer is working on a book to discover his family and his connection to it, paralleled with his story growing up.
“It hasn’t been easy tracing my family roots. Originally I was searching to see if I was a son of the American Revolutionary War," he explained.
His search started with an innocent question from his grandson, asking where he came from.
“I knew who my father was and my grandfather was but beyond that I didn’t know anything,” he said.
At the time he was writing a book called "My Highway Home” the story of his coming of age. He left home at 17 in Nelson County, Virginia and joined the military. After his service, he became a newspaper photographer in California.
“I wrote that and finished that and began digging into the question of who I am,” he said. “I need to find out who we are because I grew up with Drumhellers that my mother told me I was not kin to, now I am finding out they are my first cousins.”
In 1985, his great aunt gave him a book of his genealogy. He is able to trace back the male direct lineage to 1588. He comes from skilled craftsmen.
Along his journey tracing these roots, he hit a roadblock. He came across a Samuel Coulter Drumheller born in 1801. This is not the Sam Drumheller that founded the town, but he speculates he could be a relative. The story he learned is that Samuel went west and disappeared from roughly 1819 to 1828.
“The speculation is that he was so enamored about the Lewis and Clark Expedition that he travelled west. That is who I have been trying to track down. We know he got as far as the Missouri River,” said Wayne. “He returned to Virginia in 1857 and died in 1958.
Wayne is trying to connect this Samuel Drumheller to the Town of Drumheller’s founding Father. While in Drumheller, Wayne spent time doing research with Linde Turner, Deb LaPlante and even Dorothy Bergos.
The Town of Drumheller’s namesake is known to be the son of Jesse Drumheller and was born in Walla Walla County, Washington in 1864. Jesse may have been the son of Nicholas Lafayette Drumheller of Virginia. The legend of Sam Drumheller was that he won a coin toss with Thomas Greentree to become the namesake of the town.
One thing that Wayne has learned about his family is they were cunning.
“There is some question about the toss of the coin, that possibly that Drumheller could have set it up for Greentree because he was after fame rather than fortune,” he said. “This is a common thread all the way back to 1627. Craft and cunning has been a common thread throughout the Drumhellers.”
“Coming to Drumheller I didn’t know what I was going to find. What I have found is some essence of what the Drumhellers were. They were persistent, hardy people, and I know they made it everywhere.”
At first when writing his book he was planning to skip over the small era between the two Samuel Drumhellers, but now he is more determined to bridge this gap.
He appreciates any feedback he he can receive from those who know more about the Drumheller family and encourages them to email him at wd2999@yahoo.com
