Home for the Holidays

 

Well, I did it again. Apparently, I've developed this habit of managing to spend a good portion of the month of December away from home. When that happens, as it did this month, I afterwards regret having lost that time for being home during the earliest part of this winter holiday season. Reviewing some of my old posts at A Family Tapestry though, I realize that this year wasn't the first time I've done this to myself. And just like in those past years, my annual ritual of sending out old fashioned, handwritten Christmas cards becomes a race to finish before the holiday I'm celebrating actually arrives.

This makes it all the more special to actually be home for the holidays—a time to relax and enjoy one's own home, no matter how humble, or needing repairs, or over-stuffed with enough things to make yet another round of gift-giving seem redundant. It's just nice to have a place to call home.

Whether with family or friends new or old, whether at home or on the road, I hope you find a quiet respite—a space or haven you can call home—to appreciate a moment of peace as this year draws to a close.

Image above: Dargun with illuminated church and visitors on Christmas Eve 1920; oil on canvas by German artist Marie Hager; courtesy of Wikipedia; in the public domain.

 

Capturing Conversations

 

With the holidays fast approaching—and some gatherings already accomplished among those family members with too many invitations to honor in too few days—thoughts of possible conversations to capture come to mind. In my case, I've already had the opportunity to visit with my oldest remaining cousin, who will soon turn ninety two. Whenever he mentioned a family detail I wanted to remember—but was sure to forget!—my husband came up with a way to guarantee we didn't lose it.

Years ago, we might have pulled out a tape recorder to preserve the words of an older relative—until we realized there is no faster way to put the brakes on a conversation than to stick a microphone in someone's face. Something about that technology seemed to freeze up the flow of conversation. People became too self-conscious of what they were saying. Coming to a visit armed with pens and notebooks likewise seemed to introduce a disruptor to the otherwise easy give and take of a natural conversation. So we'd just rely on our memories to reconstruct the narrative after the visit was over.

That was when we had memories that could hold on to details for hours on end. This is not then. For this visit, when my cousin mentioned a detail we really wanted to remember—the name of the author of a book he really appreciated, for instance—my husband simply pulled out his phone to make a note. Because my husband uses voice activated dictation ("Thumbs are too fat," he'd claim) he'd simply open his "notes" app, talk into his phone in an easy conversational manner, then pull in my cousin with a question—"What was the name of that author?" for instance—and transform what otherwise would have been a monologue into a three-way conversation, all captured on his phone, a device we all are so familiar with using.

Introducing the phone's note app into the conversation as an unobtrusive tool the group is using together seemed so much more natural than what so many of us used to try in years long past. It had more of the feel of a team working jointly on a project than an audience riveted on the words of one unprepared speaker.

Thankfully, the days of the cassette tape recorder and its far too obvious microphone are long past. While I'm glad for my relatives who did manage to coax reluctant elders to spill their guts for the requested monologue of their life's story, I've always wondered what those relatives would really have sounded like, rather than the nervous, uptight, hemming-and-hawing amateur performers that they came across as. The conversational give-and-take of teamwork, where the interviewee is actually a working part of the group, rather than the target of its focus, certainly yields a far more natural-sounding impression.

While we may be interested in what our older relatives have to tell us—and they may be just as interested to let us know those important details—approaching the project jointly may be a more satisfying effort for all of us.

Turning Points

 

Here in the northern hemisphere, we just passed the shortest day of the year. Looking ahead, the days will get imperceptibly longer—and noticeably colder. Sometimes, those turning points can be rather obvious. Other times, the change has to overtake us before we even begin to realize what happened.

The new year is one of the more obvious turning points. Some people plan for the "new you" they will become with the flip of that special page on the calendar. I've never been one for New Year's resolutions, but this year I'm already gearing up for my Twelve Most Wanted for 2025. I've given it quite a bit of thought, ever since I realized I hadn't planned for this year's technology advances which could favorably impact my research progress. Less than one month spent on my father's ancestry this past fall and I woke up to how much more can be accomplished when newly digitized record sets become available online. The game changer is increased access.

While my numbers today for my biweekly count hardly show any turning point despite that game changer—I only added seventy nine more documented family members to my parents' tree—the steady plodding through available digitized records over the years has resulted in a tree which now totals 38,752 relatives. Besides this month's focus on First Families candidates, I also managed to work on my in-laws' tree as a follow-up to discovery of a DNA match. Seventeen new names in that tree puts the total count for my husband's lines at 37,044.

Before long, it will be decision time for a new year of research. This time, I'll know better than to slack when I think lack of records access would hold me back. Between new—or new-to-me—websites in the countries of my family's origin and AI-assisted developments like FamilySearch labs' full text search and reading capabilities, I'm looking forward to selecting the most frustrating—yet now promising—family lines for my research focus in 2025. 

Only four more days and I'll begin selections for my Twelve Most Wanted for 2025. I'm ready to reach some turning points in that constant quest to break through ancestral brick walls in the upcoming year.

In a Blink

 

This month, I've been keeping a close eye on the calendar. With so much on the schedule, the month is flying by. In a blink, it will be Christmas and I am hardly ready for that big event. After all, I just spent ten days—despite the pressure of impending holidays—on a special trip to Florida, where I got to visit with family and celebrate some special events. Times like that make a pleasant detour from the requirements of holiday preparations, yet create more pressure with every passing day not on task.

Traveling always gets me thinking, especially as I expand that ever-growing family tree. How many people in the airport do I pass who might be my third or fourth cousins? They are just a blip on the radar of the many faces of strangers I see in the passing crowds, and just as fleeting an entry among the many collateral relatives who fill my family tree.

Among the family members we visited on this journey was my ninety one year old—and oldest—cousin. I can't help but recall memories of him in his younger years. It was he who first introduced me to the tongue-in-cheek label of "outlaws" as a way to explain the connection between in-laws of in-laws. He was one of several cousins and siblings who had chased for years after that family mystery of my paternal origins—Polish, not Irish as my grandfather's story had always portrayed it. If it weren't for this cousin sharing old photographs, I would never have known what my paternal grandparents looked like, for they died before I was even born. This is a cousin who treasures his family history.

Ninety one years of a full life may be a remarkable achievement, not to mention a blessing of good health and fortune. But even notable situations like that may be gone in a blink, making such moments as this all the more a treasure. I often hear people complain about "having" to visit family over the holidays; perhaps, on the contrary, it is an unrecognized blessing to be able to spend time with relatives. Sometimes, we don't recognize it until—blink—we can't do so any more. 

Known by the Road They Lived On

 

In sorting out the various pioneer families named Ashley in our county—each of whom claimed the same surname—it was interesting to discover that local people differentiated those men by the road they lived on. There was, for instance, George H. Ashley of the Woodbridge Road, and George W. Ashley "on the Cherokee Lane road." Fortunately for me, since I've been tracing the history of the latter Ashley and know the roads in this area, these designations helped. It is, after all, my goal to determine who might have been the specific person from the right Ashley family whose name subsequently was carried on a street sign near my home.

However, the 1930 census revealed that the naming of the street, which I had supposed to be named after George W. Ashley, was already accomplished. There, residing on Ashley Lane, was the subject of my hypothesis, along with his wife Clara and daughter Lorett. 

The 1930 census gave me some guidance on where the Ashley property might originally have been. As census records of the 1900s provided, the first vertical column contained entries for the street names as the enumerators made their rounds through each neighborhood. Just above the listing of families on Ashley Lane were the names of families living on Foppiano Road. A quick check of a street map shows the corner where the two streets intersect, now the domain of a local fire station near the Calaveras River in California's San Joaquin County. 

Searching through local newspaper collections for both the city to the south—Stockton—and the city to the north named Lodi, I found additional guidance concerning the property. George W. Ashley was apparently a vineyardist who eventually believed that smaller parcels would better suit the needs of those who specialized in wine grapes. That, in fact, was what he decided to do with half of his 350 acres in 1922, according to one article in The Lodi Sentinel, subdividing the land into ten and fifteen acre parcels and selling them.

That, however, couldn't be the end of the story, for the census previous to that 1922 newspaper article's announcement also revealed the name of the street where George lived, at that time listed as Ashley Road.

This George W. Ashley had an interesting life, judging from the many mentions I found of his name in local newspapers. He ran for state office and was elected, for instance, as a representative to the California state assembly from 1916 through 1920, as well as being active in many local organizations. The presumption could be that someone with a life story like that might logically have been the one to see his name appended to a street sign or other honorary remembrance. But the honor might have gone to someone else in this case of the lane called Ashley.

A brief mention in the obituary of George W. Ashley's mother might shed some light—though I'm still far from accomplishing any goal of finding documentation of the source of that designation. When Algeline Jackson Ashley died in 1903, a long obituary featured her history in the Stockton Daily Record on September 14. Among the notes concerning the widow of William D. Ashley—"one of the oldest and best known women in the county"—Mrs. Ashley's obituary mentioned her connection to a prominent son in Stockton: Arthur H. Ashley, a former District Attorney, and brother to George W. Ashley. As for George's own mention in his mother's obituary, it was noted that he "conducts the Ashley farm."

Was George the son who inherited the family farm? Was it George's father to whom the honor of the namesake street sign was owed? Unlike the story of the Hildreth family, whose descendants knew well for whom that street was named, I have yet to run into any mention of the Ashley family history reflected in the obituaries of William Ashley's descendants. But I'm still far from done reviewing all the descendants of William and Algeline Ashley. Perhaps another son's descendants will echo that story in subsequent generations.  

Finding the Right Family

 

There is yet another particular street in my county which I knew was named after a pioneer settler—but which one, I forgot. Since I knew this settler would certainly be eligible for recognition as a First Families designee for our local genealogical society's program, I wanted to get that detail correct. However, there were several unrelated families possessing that same surname who all arrived in the earliest years of our county's history. As it turns out, finding the right family name will be a challenge.

The street is named Ashley Lane. Despite the mental image which might be conjured by the designation of this road as a "lane," the street winds its way for several miles across both residential areas and stretches of farmland to connect two different state highways. For that reason, it was hard to pinpoint just whose original parcel might have been the one lending the adjacent road its owner's name.

Since a good number of the several families named Ashley arrived during the early years of California statehood—some, as we've already noted, who came here following news of the gold rush—I began searching, one family at a time, to see whether descendants might have mentioned awareness of a heritage including having a road named after an ancestor. After all, we had already witnessed that with the Hildreth family we reviewed yesterday.

In the case of finding which Ashley family was honored by the street name, the answer is "not yet." So we'll spend a few days searching for more details. After all, each of the families I've reviewed so far are First Families eligible, so the study will be helpful on that one account.

Take, for instance, my original guess as to the correct subject: Jireh Perry Ashley from Massachusetts. Following the lines of his four sons in San Joaquin County, I soon realized none of them had any children who could claim the honor of becoming the namesake for that street.

However, among the members of the Pioneer Society at Stockton mentioned in the 1890 Illustrated History of San Joaquin County, California was a settler named William D. Ashley. In fact, when the California State Library assembled their "Pioneer and Immigrant Files" stretching from 1790 to 1950, there was a three-page entry for William Ashley. Not much was said in that 1890 book, other than that he was born in 1819 in Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania, and came across the plains to reach California in 1850. But by 1852, the book noted, William D. Ashley had purchased land in San Joaquin County.

Whether that parcel of land, eight miles from the city of Stockton, became the inspiration for naming the street we now know, I can't say. But I did find a few details about this family which merit a closer look. We'll continue that chase tomorrow.

Knowing the Family's Story

 

Much has been said for the power of knowing one's own family history, and the resilience it can bestow upon members of subsequent generations. In the case of one local settler eligible for recognition in our county's First Families program, those descendants apparently knew that story well, judging from its repeat appearance in family lore in later generations.

That family represented the descendants of Elias Hildreth, born in Gardiner, Maine, in 1823. A romanticized version of his story appeared in a local history book from 1890, An Illustrated History of San Joaquin County, California. The story of his arrival in California in 1849, according to that biographical sketch, makes it seem as if he had made the six month journey around the Horn by himself. Checking the 1850 census, however, shows a different story: that he, his wife Miranda, and three year old son were then living in Providence, Rhode Island.

An 1867 entry in California's Great Register does show Elias as a registered voter in California, living in O'Neal Township in San Joaquin County at the time, and a brief announcement of the birth of his second son in November of 1865 in the Sacramento Bee confirms his family's residence near that outback territory along the Calaveras River.

No matter how, exactly, the story unfolded, it is clear from tracing the family's line of descent that they knew the history of how their ancestors arrived during the earliest years of San Joaquin County. From a clipping of the obituary of Myrna Hildreth, preserved by reference librarians at the downtown Stockton library, we can read the words her family wanted to share after her 1989 passing at the age of ninety three.

She was born in 1896 at the family home on Hildreth Lane. Her Grandfather came around the Horn on a Sailing Ship to San Francisco in 1849 and settled in the Stockton area in 1852.

Again, another descendant's obituary shared the family story through a transcription of a more recent obituary from 2013, posted at Ancestry.com:

His great-grandfather, Elias Hildreth, for whom Hildreth Lane is named, came to this area in the mid 1850s from Rhode Island.

Indeed, Hildreth Lane could have marked one border of Elias Hildreth's original farm of 354 acres—and if not, possibly the ranch he bought subsequently, containing another 240 acres five miles to the northeast of Stockton. Whether the residents of the tree-shaded street now know anything about the man for whom the road was named, I can't tell—but I certainly wanted to know more about the person the street was meant to acknowledge. As I've come to find out, there are several other streets here which owe their name to someone whom we can recognize as First Families of our county.  

On the Streets Where we Live

 

Perhaps the reason First Families programs seem so interesting to me is that I've realized how history surrounds us. In all the sights around us are tokens of our location's past. Consider, for example, street signs. Those street names may well be bearing witness to the people who once lived in the very place they are marking.

I've taken an old plat map for our county—San Joaquin County in northern California—and stared at the names listed on the labeled boxes representing farmland ownership. The map is not very old—drawn up in 1895—but it is certainly old enough to be long before my time. Yet I recognize the names of former property owners in my neighborhood, thanks to those very street signs. These are names which can easily be catalogued in our register of First Families. Talk about local roots: if nothing else, that is a project which could help our neighbors recognize their county's heritage.

Take, for instance, the name of rancher Elias Hildreth. This was an immigrant to California from Rhode Island, but he was originally from Gardiner in Kennebec County, Maine. Like many young men in 1849, news of a gold rush launched him on a six month journey around the Horn, arriving in San Francisco on September 9 that same year. Like many, he found that augmenting his mining efforts—which he abandoned by 1851 to work his own trade as a blacksmith—proved to be more profitable in the long run, bringing him eventually to San Joaquin County, where his name can be found on the county's plat map—and on a street sign in the vicinity.

A similar story goes for another surname found on a county street sign: Ashley. Though there are several by this surname in our county, one such family by that name owes its residence in our county to another frantic chase after the gold in the California hills. Whether Jireh Perry Ashley from Massachusetts or any of his descendants were part of the family for which this California street was named, I can't yet tell, but I do see that name featured among those in the 1895 plat map for my county.

Likewise for another California gold rush arrival: a man by the name of L. U. Shippee. Arriving toward the end of the gold rush era in this state, L. U. Shippee found the prospects not as bright as anticipated, and returned to his launching off place in Stockton. There, he met up with a former acquaintance and began the first of several business ventures from which—at least according to one flowery biographical sketch—he eventually experienced a good measure of success. His name, too, appeared among those identified in the county's plat map, and his surname is still commemorated on a street sign as well.

These are just three early settlers in our county whose personal history could use augmentation with some family history, for those descendants who may be seeking more information on their local roots. We'll spend some additional time this week exploring those connections.

Map above: Portion of 1895 plat map of San Joaquin County, California, courtesy of the U. S. Library of Congress.

 

A Life's Trajectory, Backwards

 

In looking at the First Families applications we've received in our local genealogical society, I often wonder what drew these immigrant families from far and wide to settle in our county. One applicant to our program wished to pursue his patriline back to England. His great-grandfather had settled in California with his parents by 1875, according to his naturalization records. And yet, as I explored the other side of his family—also settlers in our county—I discovered that their trail to San Joaquin County followed a different route.

Annie Caroline Sprengler, long before she met her husband in our county, was born in Utah—or perhaps Colorado, depending on which census record is consulted. Despite the unclear location of Anna's 1860 arrival, her younger sister Katherine was born six years later in California. The family was moving westward. But what brought them to any of these places? What was Anna Sprengler's life trajectory?

To determine this, of course, requires us to follow a person's life story backwards in time, step by step from the date at which we encountered them—usually, for our ancestors, through an obituary or death record—to their earliest record of existence. In Anna's case, uncovering her family's origin required tracing the pathway that brought her parents to the western reaches of the United States.

The Sprengler family was resident in San Joaquin County long before our First Families current cut-off century date of 1924. Anna and her siblings were fully catalogued in the 1880 census while living in O'Neal Township in what now includes the city of Stockton. Her father Valentine, by then fifty two years of age, was listed as a farmer from Bavaria.

Bavaria, however, far predated the time of this census report. Before arriving at any information on that location, there were several events to consider. That 1880 census reported an overview of the family's travels. Eldest child Theodore was born in Illinois while John was born in Iowa. It was this census which recorded Anna's own birth as being in Colorado, before her sister's 1873 birth in California.

It was their father Valentine's own entry in California's 1866 Great Register of voters which helped point us further eastward. According to the note there, Valentine was naturalized on March 30, 1860, in Fayette County, Iowa. 

This, of course, calls into question the report that his daughter Anna was born in either Colorado or Utah in July of that same year.

More records materialized to trace the Sprengler family's progress westward. A land record in 1859, drawn up in Dubuque, Iowa, for Valentine Sprengler "of DuPage County, Illinois," gave the precise location of his purchase of eighty acres in Iowa. This occurred only a few years after his 1854 marriage, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to German immigrant Anna Caroline Koerth.

The beauty of this marriage document was its thoroughness of detail. From that document, we discover Valentine's parents' names—Adam Sprengler and Kunigunde Kressin—and the place of his own birth. While the handwritten entry in Valentine's marriage record looks like his place of birth was "Obferbaum," a quick check of the Meyers Gazetteer provides the slight correction to Opferbaum, a location designated (in German) as "a district of the municipality of Bergtheim in the Lower Franconian district of Würzburg" in Bavaria. 

From Opferbaum in Bavaria to the German port of Bremen to sail to New York City in 1852, then continuing the route to Wisconsin, Illinois, and Iowa is all laid out by documentation. From that point to California by 1866 is less clear, but it's my guess that Valentine's wife Anna made the trip westward while carrying her namesake daughter. And it's certainly obvious that the entire Sprengler family made it to our county in plenty of time to be considered as one of our Pioneer Families. 

Weaving the Strands Just a Bit Longer

 

What do you do when you can't reach back far enough in the DNA cousin's pedigree to confirm the genetic connection? In one case I've been tackling for the past couple months, it appears this DNA match connects through an immigrant descendant of my Olejniczak ancestors in Poland. This is one of those DNA problems that may require following an assumption just to reach any verification. Thus, I'm weaving the strands of this family line forward in time, in hopes of discovering the connection.

The potential DNA cousin is supposedly a descendant of Jan Olejniczak, born in Michałówo, a tiny village near Żerków where he was baptized in June of 1869. His father Bartłomiej was brother of my second great-grandmother Franziska Olejniczak, wife of Franz Jankowski. Jan—or Joannes, as he was baptized—eventually disappeared from the region in Prussia where he had grown up. Could he have emigrated? Was this Polish immigrant in the United States named John Olejniczak one and the same as Jan?

To determine the answer, I've started by accepting the assumption that Jan or Joannes were one and the same as this American immigrant. From that point, I've been working my way through Jan's American descendants, bit by bit. There are, of course, many questions still unanswered, but to know just what I'm working with, I need to have a documented tree.

So far, I've worked a few lines of this possible Jan Olejniczak down to the level of fourth cousin once removed. The strategy is to build out that line of descent to see whether I can find any other DNA matches connecting to this strand. So far, I've picked up a few more DNA matches whose trees include Olejniczak surnames, but none of those family lines seem to connect with my Jan.

Some research questions take time to weave together the strands. This line of descent seems to be one of them. Jan—or John Olenzak, as he eventually was called in Ohio—had several children, some of whom had children and grandchildren. While I can always be hopeful and say from progress that this looks like a possible connection, I'm still far from finished. Questions still lurk in the outer reaches of this wandering adventurer's journey, and this exercise will take far more time to complete—and even then, the conclusion may be that I've followed the wrong name twin's line.

But at least I'm still working on it. 

Walking Uphill Both Ways in the Snow

 

We joke about the stories of perseverance shared with us, long ago, by the older generations in our family. "We had to walk to school"—for miles, they would claim—"In the snow." 

"Uphill. Both ways," we would snicker under our breath. Yet, the message was clear: those generations had to pay a price for whatever benefits they derived.

Not so much any more. Our moment in history has birthed Karens qualified to complain about slights and oversights which people of previous centuries could only dream about enjoying. In exchange, our decade's stories of hardship and endurance pale in comparison.

It was a little more than a decade ago when The New York Times columnist Bruce Feiler published an article he called "The Stories That Bind Us." In short, he cited psychology studies which demonstrated that, even in the wake of distressing situations, young people who know about their family's past experiences prove to be more resilient despite additional stressors.

That brief article in the Times back in 2013 became Feiler's most-read piece of writing in the next decade. One of the psychologists he cited in the article—Robyn Fivush, Ph.D., by then a professor at Emory University—noted in Psychology Today ten years after the 2013 article a recap of the studies she and colleague Marshall Duke, Ph.D., had been working on since 2001. Simply put, 

If adolescents knew more about their family history, where their grandparents went to school, how their parents met, and even difficult events such as a terrible illness that a family member suffered, they showed more positive outcomes.

The key was family stories—the kind we gather as we chase those elusive ancestors to the far reaches of our pedigree charts. The Emory University researchers compiled a list of twenty questions from their Family Narratives Lab which they dubbed the "Do You Know?" list. Most of the questions focus on immediate, first-hand knowledge of relatives personally known by the adolescents in the studies—siblings, parents, grandparents—but some questions reached further. Ethnic or national heritage featured in one of the questions, as well as this peculiar gem: "Do you know about a relative whose face 'froze' in a grumpy position because he or she did not smile enough?"

One can imagine recollections of grand-uncles or great-grandmothers seeping into memory for respondents answering such questions, recalling family stories of relatives who served in a world war or endured the Holocaust. But as the generations move onward to brighter times, our stories seem to lose their vigor. Immigration to the "New World" doesn't now entail the baggage of past centuries' difficulties. We don't have loved ones succumbing to diseases which, pre-advent of penicillin, once meant a death knell. We don't even walk to school any more. In the sunshine.

We live in an era now which, for the most part, does not produce the stories of overcoming hardship which shaped past generations—and became the psychological legacy of grit and determination which shaped their descendants. What, then, happens to the source of endurance for the next generation? 

Harriet's Legacy

The first step, when examining a potential First Families candidate, is to determine whether he or she was resident in the geographic location in question. In the case of the widowed Harriet Beeman Blain—and, eventually, divorcee of English immigrant Benjamin Johnson—she technically satisfied that requirement for our local county genealogical society's program by the tiniest of margins. Sure, she arrived in San Joaquin County at least four years before the program's century cutoff date—1924 at this point—but she hardly lived more than a couple years here before dying in May of 1921.

The next question might be about the children she left behind—for she did have four daughters who survived her, despite no mention of their names in her funeral notice. Did they remain in the same county?

I had thought that each of Harriet's daughters had moved on from this county, a possible reason why there was no mention of those survivors. Harriet's legacy, as far as a First Families program went, would be very brief, judging from later notices of all four daughters dying far from the home to which their mother had brought them in their move from Kansas to California after their father's unfortunate death.

As it turned out, in following the trail of Harriet's descendants, with her oldest daughter Emma we find clarification demonstrating a family of descendants reaching into a subsequent generation in this county.

Emma's own story followed a winding path. Married barely a month prior to her mother's passing in the same home where she spent her teenage years—that same 1436 S. San Joaquin Street that the Stockton city directory once labeled as her step-father Benjamin Johnson's home—Emma became the wife of Greek immigrant Peter Chrisos. Her husband's tragic death in 1928 from tuberculosis not long after the birth of their son left Emma rebuilding her life with a first step of regaining her United States citizenship. An odd insertion in a newspaper report of that naturalization ceremony noted her as "Mrs. Emma Lelia Chrisos, Greece, born Kansas."

Emma later married immigrant Joseph P. McCartan from Ireland, but by then laws had changed and she no longer needed to regain her citizenship in order to vote. By the time of the 1950 census, Emma was still living in Stockton, not far from the home downtown where she had spent her teenage years.

Though her 1954 death record showed her place of death as San Francisco—the detail which had led me to believe she had moved out of our county—it was through her obituary that I learned the reason for her place of death being outside our county. Due to an illness occurring while at work for Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company, she had been hospitalized locally for a week, then transferred to a hospital in San Francisco for further treatment. In the end, Emma Blain Chrisos McCartan's final resting place was back in San Joaquin County, where she had spent the majority of her life.

That same obituary also confirmed the details I had found on Emma's sisters: that they had moved out of San Joaquin County for other locations—the very report which had originally prompted me to think the entire family had remained here for only a few years. Two sisters had moved to the Bay Area and one north to Sacramento, thus making my original assumption seem logical that Emma, too, had moved to San Francisco. Doubling up on details and documents, however, helps us see the clearer picture.

While it would make sense, based on current program requirements, to say that our bereft and wandering widow Harriet Blain would technically qualify for recognition in our county's First Families program by virtue of the two or three years that she lived in Stockton, it seemed such a sliver of history for such a notation. The First Families image of an immigrant founder was certainly not part of Harriet's story—and yet, there she was, at the right place and the right time to be included in our county's story. Still, to see that at least one of her daughters remained here for another generation seems to help fit the spirit of such First Families programs.

Never to be Heard From Again

 

The story of English immigrant Benjamin Johnson, who supposedly arrived in America as a young bachelor around 1891 and left his final earthly residence in 1928, brings up a point. It likely is a point which has been repeated often, if we choose to look at genealogy from the other side of a family's history.

Imagine what the story might be like, if we could know the names of those left behind at the family home when a young man or woman, eager to seek their fortune—or at least a better life—set out for a promising future in a New World. Many immigrants to New York, for instance, came as single young people. Some may have kept up ties with those whom they had left behind, sending letters or even "remittances" or support for aging parents or for siblings who hoped to follow the same path. But others may have been among those whom their relatives would sadly say were never to be heard from again.

Such seemed to be the case with Benjamin Johnson. Though he was said to be an 1891 immigrant from England—at least according to the 1910 census in Fredonia, Kansas, where we had found him settled—we were able to follow his trail to California after his marriage that year to widow Harriet Beeman Blain. That Harriet's divorce was finalized in San Joaquin County at year's end in 1920, we can estimate that the couple had made their move at least before 1919—or perhaps the trip westward from Kansas became the tipping point which destroyed their relationship.

Benjamin Johnson's obituary did materialize, following that 1928 barebones funeral announcement, but what additional information it provided only served to prompt more questions.

The news report did identify him as a former glassworks employee, reassuring me that we had found the right Benjamin Johnson, despite the article giving his name as "Benny." He was found dead in his home, a case which warranted investigation by the coroner's office, though they found no suggestion of violence.

I have often wondered how the relatives of immigrants—those family members left behind in the "old country"—could track the whereabouts of their family members, especially after news like that. That phrase, "never to be heard from again," may have been a reality for many such parents—while we, on the other side of this family history equation, struggle to identify where our immigrant ancestor came from.

Of course, since Benjamin Johnson and his wife of a brief ten years arrived in California before the century mark, they would have been eligible to be named in our local genealogical society's First Families Program. And if there were a way to share the names featured in such First Families programs across the country, such an index could provide researchers a way to trace their missing migrant family members. As far as I know, there currently is no such finding aid—though I think it might become a helpful resource. 

Fortunately, with the discovery of this bleak news report on Benjamin Johnson, a brief final paragraph provided the faintest glimmer of hope to build a family tree for him. The article concluded with news of his only known relative: "Johnson has no relatives in Stockton, but is believed to have kin in the East."

Sure enough, a previous notice back in Fredonia, that Kansas town where Benjamin had married Harriet, provided some guidance: the 1914 insertion remarked that "Ben Johnson of the glass factory" had just left town for Anderson, Indiana, "to visit a sick brother." Not that I'm about to seek out all the men named Johnson in Anderson, Indiana, to discover the name for this unnamed brother, but at least it is a way finder for those so inclined to do so.

No matter what became of immigrant Benjamin Johnson, he had not been alone among his family members who had left England. Perhaps between the two of them, someone had thought to contact relatives back home to notify them of their wellbeing. Not that I'll now be launching on a wild search to find not one, but two Johnson brothers' origin in England, but hopefully some family members back home across the ocean received news about those wandering relatives.

Tracing Harriet

 

To trace Harriet Blain's whereabouts after the tragic death of her husband John, it helped to follow the trail of another man.

His name was Benjamin Johnson, a forty three year old bachelor from England who sailed to America around 1891. By 1910, he settled in Fredonia, Kansas, and worked at a glass factory. Along with a coworker from New York, a man half his age, he boarded at the home of the widowed Mrs. Harriet Blain at 819 Seventh Street.

That was when the 1910 census was compiled on April 15. By August 10, the nearby Neodesha Daily Sun ran an insertion on the front page listing the latest marriage licenses. Two residents of Fredonia were the sole names featured in the boxed notation: Benjamin Johnson and Harriet Bell Blaine.

Tracing Harriet and her second husband from that time onward became a blur. Somehow, by 1920, Benjamin Johnson appeared in the annual directory, not for any place in Kansas, but for a city in northern California. His address was listed as 1436 S. San Joaquin Street in Stockton, California.

A surname like Johnson could complicate matters for family history researchers, and Stockton's directory presented such a factor. Fortunately, of the two Benjamin Johnsons in the city directory, only one was identified as a glassworker. In 1920, the likelihood of a woman being listed in a city directory would be slim, and there was no entry for Mrs. Harriet Johnson—if, indeed, they had actually married back in Kansas in 1910.

However, turning to the 1920 census, there was an entry for a Harriet Blain in the enumeration for Stockton, California—at 1436 S. San Joaquin Street. To be sure, it was our Harriet, for her four daughters were named in the household, but no Benjamin Johnson. 

At the time, Harriet was working as a practical nurse in private homes, according to the census record. Her eldest daughter Emma was by then twenty years of age, Rozella seventeen, and the twins thirteen years old. But where was Benjamin?

According to the 1920 census, Harriet was listed as divorced. I have yet to find any record of the divorce proceedings, including which state drew up the document, but it is clear that Harriet wouldn't have moved her daughters so far from Kansas if she had coincidentally traveled that distance while separated from her second husband.

That brief blip of an appearance in the 1920 census was followed not long after with a tiny insertion in the Stockton Daily Evening Record in May of the following year. Harriet had died on May 22, 1921, and was buried at Park View Cemetery in Manteca. Her funeral announcement noted that she was mourned by "many sorrowing friends in attendance" at the chapel of the B. C. Wallace Funeral Home, but contained no mention of any remaining family, though her daughters all survived her.

Having lived in Stockton before the 1924 cut-off for recognition in our county's First Families program, Harriet Isabel Blain Johnson was indeed eligible for the certificate program—but one could hardly call her a pioneer in the region, nor someone who had set out to establish her home in our county. She was more a victim of her circumstances than her intentional agency. And yet, she would qualify for recognition as the program is currently laid out.

As for Benjamin Johnson—the right Benjamin Johnson, immigrant glassworker from England—it was clearly he whose death notice appeared in the city's Daily Independent on the first day of September, 1928, with the promise of a funeral notice to follow. While so far, I can find none following for the "native of England," nothing in the original notice mentioned any family members. Perhaps he became one of those many emigrants who, leaving their native home, traveled alone to a distant land, never to be heard from again. 

Unintended Consequences

 

When it comes to researching our ancestors, perhaps we assume that they came to live in a place where they planned to settle. In the case of one woman who ended up in the county where I now live, one could hardly say that was the case. In a way, her life seemed to be a series of unintended consequences. But what do you do when your husband is struck by a passing train and subsequently dies of his injuries, leaving four young children who still need a home and care?

That was apparently the story of young Harriet Isabel Beeman, who married John Cunningham Blain in Vernon County, Missouri, in 1897. By 1899, John and Harriet welcomed Emma, the first of their four daughters, into their home, by then in Kansas. Yet, just as the last of their children—twins Vera and Vida—turned two years of age, tragedy struck the home. For some reason, John Blain, crossing the railroad tracks in town one day, failed to realize that alongside a standing train another one was passing through town.

I wouldn't have known any of this story, had I not found a photograph of young John Blain in an antique store close to my home. Once I spotted that abandoned picture, I wanted to rescue that orphaned photo and return it to family members. That story I shared here at A Family Tapestry almost exactly seven years ago. 

John's widow tried her best to seek some sort of financial recourse through a lawsuit filed against the railroad company, but ultimately lost. Following all that had befallen her, Harriet eventually turned to one traditional means women resorted to, for providing support for her children: running a boarding home in Fredonia, a nearby town in Kansas.

While that became a new residence for the Blain family, it certainly was nowhere near the place in Northern California where Harriet and her daughters ended up. The cause of her decision to move again to a place so much farther away became yet another step in what likely was a series of unintended consequence for the bereft family.

That became one of those stories of a character introduced into the timeline who dropped into their lives, made his mark, then seemingly disappeared, leaving the family far from where they had ever imagined they would be at the start of their troubles. But because of that series of events, a very unknown Harriet and her daughters unexpectedly became eligible to be recognized as First Families material in our county, arriving here before the century mark for this program. What do you do with an unexpected residence like that?

Tomorrow, we'll take a look at what reasons may have brought the Blain family so far from their home in Kansas.

The Trouble With First Families Programs

 

The trouble with First Families programs is that they don't specify any required minimum amount of time to be spent as resident of the program's location. In our county's First Families program, the certificates designate recognition based on settlement in three time periods: before 1860, between 1860 and 1880, and before the moving century mark—in other words, by 1924 for this year's program.

The presumption, of course, is that once a family settled in our county, they would stay in our county—and not until our modern times do we suppose descendants might finally leave the county for other locations. That, however, is not always the case. Last week, for instance, as we explored the Hutchins and Nevin families in San Joaquin County, examining the two name twins—Nathan Nevin and Nathan D. Nevin—revealed that one of the two cousins, after nearly thirty years, had moved to another county.

Perhaps that man's legacy in our county may have been lost to some descendants who, had they known the full story, might otherwise have been able to point to resources to add to their family's saga. Yet over such a time span of that length, it is certain that some documents would eventually be discovered, despite the move.

But what about people who came to this county and stayed for only a few years? Squeezing a stay in a location between two census enumerations, for instance, might make that fact invisible to the ancestor's researchers, unless the name was recorded in land records or an annual city directory. Do those people count? Would they qualify for recognition in a First Families program?

That's the unanswered question—at least for our county's First Families program. And I just realized I have already researched one woman's path that led her to our county, if only for a span of far less than five years.

Unless you have been a longtime follower of A Family Tapestry, you may not recognize the name of Harriet Isabel Beeman Blain Johnson, but after I share her story tomorrow, perhaps you'll realize, as I have, that a county's story is not only made up of the well-known and well-connected, but of the hundreds of nearly-nameless faces who add their touch to our neighborhoods, if only for a brief while.  

Progress: Sometimes Fast, Sometimes Slow

 

It may be time for my biweekly count, but I haven't really done much to contribute to progress on my own trees lately. Reason: I've spent the last two weeks working on a floating tree for my paternal grandmother's Laskowski kin—despite not knowing exactly how they relate—and focusing on a "giving back" project to build yet more floating trees, this time on eligible ancestors for our local First Families program.

So how did progress on my own trees fare? Well, only fifty one were added to my tree, and sixty to my in-laws' tree—the latter due only to work on a DNA match I've been pursuing for weeks now. Still, my in-laws' tree now has 37,027 documented ancestors plus collateral lines—thanks to the never-ending pursuit of DNA cousins. And my own tree currently has 38,673 individuals, if you include all the Laskowskis floating out there in genealogical outer space.

Granted, there have been several added to the tree related to John Hutchins, that early settler we've been discussing in our county who came to California from Canada via the Great Plains and Iowa. Those new discoveries in the Hutchins and Nevin families, however, haven't been added to either of my family trees, nor will the ones we meet in the next couple weeks in this First Families year-end wrap up of my Twelve Most Wanted project.

While John Hutchins, Nathan Nevin and others in their related lines became fairly well-known names, locally, in their time, there are others who are eligible for our local First Families program who may simply have been humble farmers in this fertile valley, one hundred years ago or more—or people with unfortunate stories whose itinerant life eventually led them to our county. We'll take some time next week to explore a few of those stories.

Glimpses of Everyday Life

 

Just gotta love the tidbits that pop up when researching ancestors in the local newspaper. While working on the Nevin family for our county's First Families program, I spotted an insertion in the November 20, 1914, edition of the Stockton Daily Evening Record. Granted, it was buried toward the bottom of page seven, but a search for Eugene Henry Nevin, one of Nathan Nevin's sons, through the digitized newspapers for that city yielded a glimpse of everyday life for this family. Newspapers can be good for that.

Under the headline, "Record Ad Restores a Lost Black Cat," ran this grateful reader's explanation.

"I want to thank the Record for finding my cat," said Mrs. Eugene H. Nevin, of 837 North Lincoln street, over the telephone to the Record the other evening. "I lost a valuable black cat and I inserted a lost ad in the Record. That evening Miss Ella Henderson, who lost an antique gold brooch, was looking over the classified ads in the Record to see whether her pin was advertised as found and she read my ad. A few minutes later she stepped out on the street and saw a large black cat. 'I'll bet that's the lost cat which I saw advertised,' she said. She called to the cat and it came to her. Then she rang me up. Sure enough, it was my cat."

Reading that brief insertion in the local newspaper woke me up to the fact that I had some assumptions about life in 1914 in the California town which the Nevins called home. Looking at a city directory for a much later date showed name entries along with residence addresses, but no phone numbers. However, that did not mean there were no phones in those households.

I went looking for more information on this simple question about the everyday life of our ancestors. Specifically focusing on telephone communication, which I had presumed wasn't yet a widespread part of everyday life for folks in 1914, I learned that there was estimated to be about one "working telephone" for every ten people in the United States. One phone company's blog mentioned that thirty five percent of American households likely had a telephone by 1920.

But how evenly spread was that distribution of "working" phones? While a timeline of the rollout of the telephone made for detailed reading, it didn't answer my specific question. Still, an article from the website of a California museum revealed that, at least in the state where the Nevins lived, the telephone was "so enthusiastically received by Californians" that nearby San Francisco became the third city in the world to open up a telephone exchange.

In 1878.

For those who wish to find such answers about our ancestors' daily life, leave it to the census bureau to provide far more information than we could ever use. However, it answered my question. On page 480 of a mind-numbing hodgepodge of bureaucratese, on "Telephone and Telegraph Systems," a table revealed that precisely in 1914, there were 100.6 telephones per one thousand population.

That still doesn't answer my questions about the particulars of distribution of the innovation in San Joaquin County, California, but it is apparent that not only did Mrs. Eugene H. Nevin have a phone, but Miss Ella Henderson did, too. 

I'd be tempted to ask, next, whether Miss Henderson ever found her antique gold brooch, but that's a task for another family historian.

Image of newspaper article from Stockton Daily Evening Record, November 20, 1914, page 7, above, courtesy of Newspapers.com.

Name Twin Alert

 

Stumbling across the possibility that there might be more than one person by the same name in the same town can become a wake up call to researchers to proceed carefully. Especially when those name twins also were born about the same year, there's always the possibility that the research path might inadvertently lead up the wrong ancestral path.

I can't even remember the first time I encountered such name twins. It was years ago, but I do remember that they turned out to be cousins, born a couple years apart—but the wiggle room built into birth estimates on decennial census records didn't help. I learned to tread carefully when stepping backwards in time on the trail of my forebears when spotting a name twin alert.

In this week's case of pursuing a First Families line for our local genealogical society, I once again encountered name twins. In the Nevin family, migrating from Linn County, Iowa, westward after the California Gold Rush, were two brothers and their families. The one brother—Alexander—we have already discussed, along with his son Nathan (or Nate, as a county history book identified him during his years as county treasurer).

I had found both of them, father and son, listed in California's Great Register for the year 1867. If I had looked farther, I would have spared myself the puzzle of sorting out two men by the name of Nathan Nevin.

Though I had spotted newspaper entries which puzzled me about differing dates and locations for Nathan Nevin's death, it wasn't until I ran across a Find A Grave volunteer's explanation posted at Alexander Nevin's memorial that I found the details to help clarify the connections. There, a volunteer had noted that Alexander had traveled to California with his brother John. Could John have also named a son Nathan?  

On the same page in the book I found cataloguing registered voters for San Joaquin County, sixty one year old Alexander Nevin was named, along with sixty three year old John Nevin. Both of them reported that they had been born in Pennsylvania, and were now living in Elk Horn Township. 

But there's more. That same page in 1867 also contained the entry for thirty two year old Nathan Nevin, born in Ohio. And not much farther down the page, another entry for a Nathan Nevin, age thirty two and born in Ohio. Thankfully, that second Nathan Nevin included his middle name—listed in the register as Deny—to help differentiate the two men of the same age and possessed of the same name.

Not content to rely solely on that one document, you know I had to look further for how they connected. Rewinding history to his 1860 census entry back in Linn County, I found the faint entry for Nathan Nevin and his wife Margaret—listed in that enumeration by her initials, M. M.—whereas Alexander's son Nathan had been listed in a different town in Linn County along with his wife Mary and son Alexander.

Following through on census entries before and after that point, it was quite clear these were two different men—and that I had sorted their relationships correctly. In the end, the 1901 obituary for Nathan D. Nevin, published in the Stockton Evening Mail, despite his move by 1880 to a different county, clarified that he was indeed cousin of Alexander's son Nathan—causing me to wonder why the name Nathan might have been significant to both branches of the Nevin family. Perhaps that is foreshadowing a namesake of a significant Nevin ancestor yet to be discovered. 

In the Company of Family

 

When it comes to following the route of our migrating ancestors, the concept of the "F.A.N. Club" becomes a useful reminder that pioneer journeys likely occurred in the company of family, associates, and neighbors from the place they left behind. The same was apparently the case for the First Families cluster I've been following, the families of John Hutchins and his eventual bride, Anna Nevin.

Although John Hutchins didn't marry Anna Nevin until after both had arrived in California, it is possible that the families knew of each other before their California arrival, as John, traveling with his family from his native Canada, had stopped in Iowa at the time of the 1850 census. In his brief biographical sketch in George Tinkham's 1923 tome, History of San Joaquin County, California, the author had mentioned that the Nevin party crossed the Great Plains ten years later than the Hutchins family, and in half the time—only three months.

Having the Tinkham volume available to me digitally enabled a quick search through its 1,600 pages to see whether there were any biographical sketches in the book on the Nevin side of the family. Unfortunately, that was not the case for Anna's father Alexander Nevin, nor for any of her other relatives. However, the full-text search capability pointed me to a few other residents' entries which included brief mentions of the Nevin name.

From that search, I spotted an entry for a farmer turned county official by the name of John Perrott. Though not a relative of either the Hutchins family or the Nevin family, his entry included the mention that he had served as "assistant to County Treasurer Nate Nevin."

County Treasurer? Nate Nevin? Could that "Nate" be Anna Nevin Hutchins' brother Nathan Nevin?

I followed the genealogical trail for Nathan Nevin, in hopes of finding any documentation to share his position in life. Finding him as a fifteen year old, back in Linn County, Iowa, in his father's household for the 1850 census didn't tell me much. Seeing him still in Iowa for the 1860 census wasn't much of an encouragement, either—although I did see he was now married and father of two year old son Alexander, named after Nathan's own father. But since he was still in Iowa, I fretted that maybe he'd never make the move to California.

How about the 1870 census? After all, Nathan's father Alexander was eventually living in California, judging by his 1878 appearance in a Stockton directory. But in 1870, with a growing family, Nathan Nevin was still in Linn County, Iowa.

It wasn't until the 1880 census when Nathan Nevin and his family appeared in the record for San Joaquin County, California. By then, Nathan was forty five years of age, and his occupation was listed merely as farmer. No county office mentioned.

Even the 1892 Great Register entered his occupation simply as farmer, though the 1900 census provided the enigmatic occupational label as "capitalist." And the obituary I was pointed to by Ancestry.com hints mentioned nothing about the man except a string of initials for the names of his sons—while incorrectly listing three of his sisters as if they were his daughters.

What next? Take this search directly to the newspapers, myself. If Nathan Nevin were the same as Nate Nevin the county treasurer, surely he would have been mentioned in the local news. And he was.

The first entry I found, searching directly through Newspapers.com, was for the very man whose biographical entry in Tinkham's book had mentioned Nate Nevin, the treasurer. This time, the wording was in the 1928 obituary for John Perrott.

There was far more to explore. Apparently, in the election of November 1890, Nathan Nevin had indeed run for the office of treasurer in San Joaquin County—and won, 3027 votes to 3013.

His opponent promptly took him to court, along with the county Board of Elections, for alleged misconduct. Though Nevin emerged the victor, plans were in the offing to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court. Whether that actually happened or not, no matter, for at the end of Nevin's two year term, his opponent won the subsequent election.

Fortunately, doing a thorough and independent search through the local newspapers available on Newspapers.com and at the California Digital Newspaper Collection pointed out several additional mentions of Nathan Nevin. Besides the brief obituary—with the errant listing of his sisters as daughters—I was able to find another obituary which spelled out the man's personal history, including dates of migration between Iowa and California, and a funeral notice which pointed out his political endeavors (albeit with the incorrect relationship given for his sisters) and other relatives mentioned from his extended family.

All told, the search through several newspaper entries bearing Nathan Nevin's name helped paint a clearer picture of his family. At the same time, though, learning about his extended family members through these additional news reports pointed out one hazard: Nathan Nevin had a name twin—someone we'll need to learn more about, to help avoid any possible confusion between the two men possessed of the same name.

Tracing the Connections

 

It's not just the direct line connection to a First Families ancestor that fascinates me. It's tracing the connections of all the collateral lines of that ancestor which makes this exploration interesting. While one First Families application may gain recognition for a specific ancestor, just pointing to that name, that person, allows others to find their way to that connection, as well.

Take yesterday's case of John Hutchins, the Canadian immigrant who crossed the Great Plains with his family to seek his fortune in the California Gold Rush. John Hutchins arrived with his Irish-born parents as well as five siblings—each of whom likely had descendants who also can qualify for our county's First Families program.

As for John Hutchins' wife Anna Nevin, she too arrived in California with family. Her father, Alexander Nevin, had lost his wife Sarah in 1854, long before the journey westward, but by the time of the 1870 census, both Anna's father and another Nevin relative lived in the Hutchins household in California.

Any one of these several siblings in either of the two families joined by the Hutchins-Nevin wedding could have become the ancestor of direct line descendants who might not even realize their connection to a couple eligible for First Families recognition.

Being able to point the way by a publicly-shared tree or document diagramming such relationships could help others realize their connection to local history. Multiply that possibility by each of the First Families programs currently in operation throughout the United States, and we'd have some amazing resources to help researchers find their way back through time and connect with their own family history.

Because I'm curious, I'll be checking these connections in the Hutchins and Nevin families, and adding them to our genealogical society's fledgling online tree of our county's First Families notables.

Founders and their Families

 

In working on First Families projects, we sometimes anticipate receiving records of significant men and women who were instrumental in building our state or county. In our county's case, one of the most well-known names of local city founders was that of one man who settled in Lodi, California. His name was John Hutchins, and he was the Canadian-born son of Irish immigrants. He likely came to California for one reason: the Gold Rush. But he made the wise choice to take his winnings from that mining gamble and invest it in a more solid future.

In one of those ubiquitous local history books of the late 1800s and early 1900s, author George H. Tinkham offered up a brief biography of John Hutchins in his 1923 tome, History of San Joaquin County, California. Ascribing to John Hutchins the honor of being included among "the highly honored pioneers" of the county, Tinkham portrayed him as a local man with an "interesting history" and "enviable record." True, the book containing what seems to be a lasting legacy was published a quarter century after John Hutchins' passing in 1899, but books like this often excelled at hyperbole.

Still, the Hutchins name is one that is noted even now in the town's public places, including at least one civic building and street name. Local residents who have been here for a while recognize that name as coming from one of the city's founders.

John Hutchins apparently migrated to California across the Great Plains with his family. Arriving during the later years of the California Gold Rush—his family was enumerated in Iowa for the 1850 census—he would have been in his late teens or early twenties when the family arrived in Placer County.

He and his family apparently met with some success at that mining venture, for the extended Hutchins family decided it would be far more prudent to invest their money in land in the nearby Central Valley, where land prices at the time were quite reasonable. There is a record of a John Hutchins taking advantage in 1872 of the Homestead Act provision to acquire land in San Joaquin County, a fertile location for farming ventures, with access to water provided by nearby rivers.

John Hutchins was apparently in the "Big Valley" before that date, however, for the local newspaper noted his appearance in court in Stockton to vouch for his brother James during naturalization proceedings in  1868, and, even before that date, John stood before the pastor of Saint Mary's Church in that same city to be wed to his bride from Iowa, Mary Ann Nevin.

With that began the family and business ties which remained throughout John Hutchins' life. Though a foreign-born immigrant, he made business and personal connections tying him to the town he helped to form. From farmer to real estate owner to businessman, John Hutchins was credited, in partnership with associates, of laying out the town of Lodi and selling lots to the first residents there. He remained there for the rest of his life and was buried in Lodi in 1899.

It's what happened with the next generation, though, that moved away from that "First Families" designation, as John Hutchins' children married and moved away. Yet it is in that next generation that we see the beginnings of the network of descendants which eventually will tie back in with those roots in Lodi. It's the connections between the many lines of descent that tie back to the home location which fascinate me as I research these First Families applications.   

Remembering "First Families"

 

For this month's goal, as laid out almost a year ago in my Twelve Most Wanted research plan, I had thought that surely there were no more resources for me to continue pursuing my father's Polish ancestry. Instead, I set upon a different plan: a genealogical "giving back" project. For this month, I'd work on the family trees of the "first families" of my county.

By "first families," I'm referring to the programs offered by many groups to recognize and honor the early settlers for a particular geographic area. These certificate programs generally award recognition to a direct line descendant of an honored early resident, along with preserving that ancestor's family history. Some programs are coordinated by historical societies, such as the First Families of Tennessee, launched by the East Tennessee Historical Society. Many are administered by state genealogical organizations, such as the Utah Genealogical Association's First Families of Utah. Some county organizations also host First Families programs, such as the San Mateo County Genealogical Society in the San Francisco bay area. There are even cities promoting First Families programs, such as Saint Louis, Missouri. 

The term "first families" may be a misnomer, at least in the way most genealogical and historical societies use it. "Early settlers" would be a far more realistic term, especially for those geographical locations which experienced wave after wave of migrant settlements. Perhaps our neighbors to the north in Canada have a more accurate way of putting things when they refer to "First Nations" among their residents. Among some U.S. statewide programs, Oklahoma acknowledges that disparity in their First Families of the Twin Territories, where their stated goal is to: "recognize, honor and perpetuate the memory of early Pioneer and Indian families who were residents of Oklahoma or Indian Territory on or before the date of statehood."

Date ranges for recognition vary from program to program. Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania members who can prove descent from a resident as early as 1638 in what is now the state of Pennsylvania are eligible to apply for recognition in the First Families of Pennsylvania program. As we move westward through the country, dates of eligibility logically advance with each respective state's settlement history, sometimes pinned to the date upon which a territory achieved statehood, as is the case with the Missouri First Families Program.

One of the best points about such First Families programs is that the hosting organization often makes available the list of names of such recognized settlers. That's how I discovered my own fourth great-grandfather, Charles McClellan, was included in the Florida Pioneer Descendants Certificate Program of the Florida State Genealogical Society. It becomes a useful resource for others who are also researching the same ancestor.

That is only one of many reasons people have given for participating in a First Families program. Years ago, Amy Johnson Crow recapped several of these reasons, reminding us that by participating in First Families programs, we are "honoring our ancestors and recognizing their contribution to history." While I've mentioned several programs above, there are far more such programs in the United States—currently, Cyndi's List provides links for seventy nine of them.

As for our own local program, it is a partnership between our county genealogical society and the county's historical society. We currently have nearly three hundred names of recognized, documented ancestors who settled in our county and were recognized by our First Families programs.

Among those early settlers were those who made our cities, suburbs, and farm regions what they are today. These were the men and women who gave us our heritage. I like how one society put it: these were the "settlers who cleared the land, drained the swamps, ran the stagecoaches, built the dams, roads and houses, planted and harvested the crops, and sold the meat, potatoes, clothing, soap and other necessities their neighbors needed."

For this month's Twelve Most Wanted, we'll review the stories of some of these settlers.