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.