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.