The Rest of the (Very Short) Story

 

Two weeks shy of an exact twenty one years after Effie Woodworth sent her grandson a letter lecturing him on his lack of respect for a family name, she followed with another letter to the same family. Only this time, Earle Bean had been dead for over a year; this letter was to Earle's widow, Marilyn Sowle Bean. Marilyn was dealing with the dire possibility that her husband's fate, owing to Marfan Syndrome, might one day become the same story for her son.

Ironically, the letter began with Effie—the same one scolding Earle for dropping the "e" in his given name—apologizing for not remembering how to spell Marilyn's name. I'm not sure how to read between the lines on this one, but when I found it, Effie's May 1957 letter had tucked within its envelope that original letter to Marilyn's then-ten-year-old husband about his name—likely left just the way Marilyn had stored them.

Along with the earlier letter from Effie was a newspaper clipping, two columns' length cut from an unnamed and undated newspaper, held together with a straight pin. On her 1957 letter, Effie added a note, "You see I have had that clipping about 30 yrs." She was right; it was almost exactly thirty years.

Headlines to the story read "Surgical Feat Performed on Baby Here"—the "here" apparently meaning the city of San Francisco. The baby was Effie's grandson, Earle's twin brother Merle, who unlike his womb-mate, had failed to thrive in the first year of his life. At nine months, while Earle weighed twenty three pounds, his twin weighed only eleven.

I had long known Earle had a twin brother, and though I knew he had died just short of what would have been his first birthday, I never knew what happened to him. According to the news article—replicated, though without his name, in an article in the San Francisco Examiner—the surgery was to repair a ruptured diaphragm, which had caused the infant's stomach to protrude and press against his lungs.

The procedure involved a two-step process, with one surgery approaching the site from the baby's right side, pushing the stomach back into place, and a follow-up surgery would correct issues on the left side. The medical feat was brought to the attention of the press by Merle's other grandmother, Ella Bean—incorrectly reported to be Merle's own mother. Effie's letter continued with the explanation that the child's aunt—Leona, herself a public health nurse—said that physical malady was not what killed Merle, but that he had erysipelas. However, the child's mother didn't agree, and neither did Effie, who launched into a long explanation in her letter of all the people in the Woodworth family who were troubled with hernias.

Whatever it was—and Effie, with her extensive knowledge of Woodworth family history, may have trumped the professional opinion of the child's aunt—nine month old Merle may have survived the ordeal of the two surgeries in May of 1927, but by July, one week before his first birthday, he breathed his last. Whether the surgery helped, hindered, or didn't make any difference at all, Maude Woodworth and her blind and deaf husband Samuel Bean had to say goodbye to their baby boy.

In searching out the data regarding our family's story, we strive to obtain the names, dates, and places  to record each person in the family constellation. We see some living long, perhaps even living past the century mark, while others' life stories are far more brief in the telling. Yet sometimes, the only way to fully know the story is not solely by governmental documentation, but through the gift of personal recollections. Finding the treasure trove of Marilyn Sowle Bean's memorabilia at the antique store the other day affords me that peek into the minutiae of just what happened in Merle Bean's very short life.

Above: Undated newspaper clipping, likely from the San Francisco, California, area, describing the first of two 1927 surgeries by "famous San Francisco surgeon" Dr. Leo Eloesser on nine-month-old infant Merle Bean to repair his ruptured diaphragm and displaced stomach.

 

About That Family Name

 

Kids can get so embarrassed by anything that makes them seem different than their friends. In the case of Marilyn Sowle Bean's husband, apparently it was his own name which embarrassed him. 

Given the name Earle, it seemed to have an extra letter at the end, a pretentious "e" which set him apart. Since Earle had also inherited another detail which made him stand apart from everyone else in school—he was born with Marfan Syndrome, causing his unusual height—he must have figured carving an "e" off his name was far more manageable than shedding a foot off his height. Why draw more attention to oneself than necessary?

Apparently, by the time he was about to turn ten, his maternal grandmother Effie Williams Woodworth had gotten wind of the egregious omission, and wrote to inform him of her displeasure. Her May 15, 1936, letter was sent to the boy barely three years after he had lost his mother—Maude, Effie's daughter—leaving him, along with his brother Sam, to be raised by his blind and deaf father and his paternal grandmother.

The letter may have started out like a typical note from a grandmother, with thanks for a Mother's Day gift he had made her, along with a report on how the weather had been in Oroville, California, where she had moved only the past March. She did not miss an opportunity to gently chide Earle and his brother for not writing her more often, then remind them that their dear departed mother's birthday was coming up a week from the next Sunday.

Then came the lecture.

Now Earle, I see you do not spell your name as it should be. Yours is a family name. That's why your mother named you Earle. Your brother's name was Merle. Please remember your name is Earle.

That last Earle was underlined for emphasis. Effie did not want Earle to miss her point. She then launched into the explanation: her paternal grandmother was an Earle—the twin sister "Merriette" Earle. You could tell she was quite proud of her family heritage—though I suspect her grandson did not appreciate the history lesson about to follow.

The Earles were very aristocratic people so you should feel honored. Your mother would wish you to spell it that way. My father's name was Eugene Earle Williams + where ever there is an Earle in our family it's spelled Earle.

Effie continued to regale her young grandson with examples of others in the extended family whose full name included Earle, then threw in a sentence about how the "Indians" in northern Wisconsin captured some of the Earle family—most of whom subsequently escaped—and then abruptly closed the letter with a cheery, "Well Earle, write again" and signed off "lovingly" as Grandma Woodworth.

I had long heard the story of how Earle had dropped that final "e" in his name over the protests of his grandmother, and now that I've received that package of Marilyn's saved letters, I now can read that note for myself. Saved after all those years, first by Earle himself, then by his wife Marilyn, eighty five years later it has finally made its way to me. Some family stories can be substantiated, but the proof doesn't always come easily.

A Letter Circles Back Home

 

Have you ever written a letter to family, only to find it returning to you, years afterwards? That's what just happened to me.

Yesterday was the day set aside to head to the antique shop in town where a newfound genea-friend had, earlier this year, alerted me about some family photographs for sale. Since the store is soon closing for the last time, it was important for me to get down there before I missed my chance to regain some of the photographs once owned by Marilyn Sowle Bean.

On the appointed day, I met with the store's owner, who had graciously set aside all she had assembled of the remains of Marilyn's collection.

To cut to the chase on the day's outcome, I suppose I should start out with the hackneyed offering: "first, the bad news." There were no remaining photographs. While I don't quite understand the explanation, apparently an "estate liquidator"—sounds so ominous!—had come in and removed all the photographs. Just the photographs.

Just my luck.

The good news is that, despite the loose-leaf condition of the remainder of Marilyn's mementos, the store owner kept noticing the same names, figured the items all belonged to one family and had, over the years, assembled them into one collection. There were newspaper clippings, club newsletter announcements, and letters—including one letter written to Marilyn from me.

"Hey, that's my handwriting," I blurted out upon seeing the envelope. I hardly expected to find my own writing becoming part of the ephemera for sale in an antique store—at least not yet!

The letter, while brief enough to fit on two sheets of stationary, was written on the occasion of having returned from a visit to Belle Woodworth, wife of Marilyn's husband's uncle—the one whose several sons manifested some form of Marfan Syndrome which lately has prompted me to search the tree for signs of which line might have carried any genetic propensity for the disease. Apparently, that same thought had been on my mind when I first began researching Marilyn's family tree so long ago.

The Bean family was my first foray into genealogy, so I was surprised to see how much information I had already laid out for Marilyn. The letter contained only a thumbnail sketch—and most of that, thanks to the documents assembled by a Woodworth cousin in that pre-Internet era of research. But much of it has been since borne out by my exploration last month.

Besides that letter to Marilyn, there were several others, including notes from her husband's maternal grandmother, Effie Williams Woodworth, on another side of the family's history. While much of the information I've already gleaned from the online resources we now find so beneficial for research, it is the little details newly found which bring these stories to life—stories which I hope to share early next year.

We'll keep in touch, this storekeeper and I, in the hopes that something else might materialize from what used to be Marilyn Sowle Bean's collection of memorabilia. In all likelihood, whatever photos remained from her original collection are now parted out and scattered in multiple directions. But we can always hope that something else will show up from the storeroom, or when the new owner sells those photos, or...or...

Above: Excerpt from letter to Marilyn Sowle Bean, outlining portions of the family tree of her mother-in-law, Maude Woodworth Bean.

Saturday's the Day

 

Why yes, I realize it is still a week away from Christmas, but in my case, I may get to enjoy a little Christmas this coming Saturday as well. My reason to celebrate? Apparently, the antique store in town which holds the remainder of Marilyn Sowle Bean's photo collection has not yet closed.

I made the phone call yesterday to see whether it was already too late. After all, though I saw the news on social media that this particular antique shop was slated to close, there was no mention of a precise date for this unfortunate occurrence. Since travel plans had already whisked me thousands of miles away for the past week, there was nothing I could do about this predicament until I returned home.

When the phone rang this time at Hubba Hubba—yes, that is the name of the store—the owner did something she said she never does: answer the phone, herself. Usually, she lets the staff standing closer to the phone handle the calls. For some reason, this time was different.

She remembered the photos. After all, it was a collection, not just a few scattered items. Because so many were labeled, she could tell these were part of a family collection, and made sure to keep as many of the items together as possible.

There were not just pictures, but newspaper clippings and other items more suited to a scrapbook collection. Thinking over some of the details she had spotted, the owner had questions. Did one of the men own a lot of dogs? Well, yes—sort of. That was Sam, the poodle trainer for the Ice Follies. Was Marilyn's nickname Rinkie? There was a copy of her high school graduation program with her nickname written in it. The shopkeeper had evidently gotten to know her "client" well, for we had quite a conversation about the items included in Marilyn's collection.

Of course, paramount in the exchange was securing a time when I could access the collection to see for myself what is left. How soon would the shop be closing? I didn't want to miss my last chance.

"Give me a few days," the owner replied. She wanted to assemble all the pieces of the collection before I met with her. Thus it was decided: I'll be able to see what else can be rescued from Marilyn's collection this Saturday. What a long journey this personal treasure chest has taken—and if I can find any extended family members who would like to receive a particular photo from the collection, that journey may continue, long after our Saturday meeting.

A Paradise Without Genealogy

 

Can there be any such thing? For me, likely not.

It's been a wonderful week's respite, relaxing under the Hawaiian sun this past week, even though our family didn't exactly travel there for vacation purposes. Let's just say it is simply impossible to come to the islands to rush, even if on business.

Before the week was out, however, I found my mind racing to make connections. Genealogical connections. Perhaps my brain is just wired that way.

Unfortunately, I have zero family history connections to this tropical paradise. No great-grandparental lines to research at the local archives. Not even any stories of families, generations ago, stopping here en route to some other trans-Pacific destination. About our only connection to Oahu is the reminder that the recently-passed anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor eighty years ago became the inspiration for my then-seventeen-year-old father-in-law to sign up to serve in the United States Navy.

Lacking any connection to our own family history on this island, I found a week without research played surprising tricks on my mind. Like a Pac-Man chomping on point-bearing dots in a never-ending maze, my mind was left to search for familial connections which never materialized. That genealogically-starved mind glommed on to strange substitutes. Discovering one type of local bird was result of an interbreeding of pigeons and doves—would you call that a "pove" or a "digeon"?—my mind even diverted to consider bird genealogy. 

Now that we are safely returned home—and once the holidays are past us—I'll likely return to more traditional genealogical pursuits. Before I accomplish anything else in this absorbing subject, though, there is one task that must be attended to, and quickly. There is an antique shop which, hopefully, has not closed its doors yet for the last time—a shop which still has in its stock the many family photographs once belonging to Marilyn Sowle Bean. Though I've regained many of those pictures, I have yet to see if I can obtain any of the rest of the collection. Today's my first chance to find out.  

Meanwhile, Not So Hubba Hubba

 

Pursuing genealogy goals is always a good research policy...until, that is, life happens. In my case, yesterday, life happened—and Thomas Puchała and the quest to discover this great-grandfather's parents will have to be put on hold. At least for one more day.

In the meantime, I took the opportunity to fly to Honolulu on the eightieth anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Yeah, what was I thinking? If my husband had thought longer and harder about it, we would have gotten here a day earlier so we could actually visit the now-historic site on this commemorative day and immerse ourselves in the history that inspired his father to enlist in the U.S. Navy before he could even finish high school.

Meanwhile, I was wishing we had made the trip a day or two later, so I'd have one last chance to make it to a special sale. You see, the local newspaper just provided the headlines in their community section informing our little corner of the world that an antique shop had announced it was closing. Not just any antique store, though; this one was called, of all things, Hubba Hubba. And that was the store where a new-found genea-friend found all of Marilyn Sowle Bean's family photos.

Oh, I had bought plenty of the photos from that collection, once my friend messaged me with the tip to go find them there. But reduced price and great bargain nonetheless, it takes money to rescue as many photos as Marilyn kept. I always promised myself that I would go back and rescue the rest of them. Someday.

That someday, however, may have already passed. In the meantime, posting here at A Family Tapestry about the family lines related to Marilyn's parents and in-laws, I've since been fortunate to hear from a few of her distant relatives—and wished I could now go back with clearer eyes to thumb through the rest of those pictures. The names I might not have recognized before I am now much more well acquainted with. Perhaps there are more still to rescue. If I can get in touch.

As sometimes happens, the answer might come in the guise of a friend of a friend. In desperation, I've reached out to someone who knows a woman affiliated with the owner of the store. As uncertainly as a castaway on some tropical isle might cast a message in a bottle into the sea, I'll be sending my desperate plea to a stranger twenty five hundred miles away, in hopes of recouping that once-lost photo collection.

Some discoveries have a way of eclipsing our best research intentions.

Imprints

 

Finding resemblances in the family photos from previous generations may be the one process which has enticed many into the pursuit of their family history. Think of every expectant couple, now proud parents of a newborn, with whom relatives share baby pictures of the previous generation with comments on how junior's eyes look like grandpa's—how often has that scenario repeated itself?

After posting a month of research articles on the family linked with the rescued photographs of Marilyn Sowle Bean, I couldn't just abandon the topic without sharing a few more from her collection (which I'll continue to do on weekends this month, as well).

Pulling out the one I chose for today's post, I found myself enticed into that same tendency of spotting recognizable features. Only this time, it wasn't so much a facial feature or a single trait I spotted, as much as a reaction to the overall impact of seeing the photograph.

The picture itself was tiny, what we'd now call a wallet-sized photograph. The label on the reverse, while helpful in providing the date—1931—left only the inked message, "Dad and Mother, Hollywood, Cal." In a similar hand, someone else had penciled in, "G'ma + G'pa Sowle."

Ah, the surname. Now, that is helpful—but which Sowle? It is hard to determine the perspective of the person labeling the photograph, when I can't figure out just who did the writing—Marilyn? Or her mother?

Judging by the appearance of the two people in the picture, the photograph couldn't have represented Marilyn's own parents, David and Olive Brague Sowle, for 1931 would have been only three years after Marilyn's own birth. Marilyn's paternal grandparents, Joe and Dora Sowle, might have followed their son to California that early—or perhaps they were just visiting their son's new home.

Wherever they were posing for their picture, I wish I could tell on account of just one detail: the extreme difference in their height. But then it struck me: if Joseph Leslie Sowle was as tall and lanky as that photo made him out to be, I am no longer surprised that tiny Marilyn chose for herself a mate as tall and slender as her own husband turned out to be.

Years ago, I had shared the photo of newlyweds Marilyn and Earle Bean, an impromptu shot composed as a joking commentary on the disparity of their relative height. But seeing the photo of an aging Joe and Dora Sowle—if that is indeed who they were—with Joe towering over his wife, makes me wonder whether that image was imprinted on Marilyn's young mind. Sometimes in life, we tend to move toward the familiar scenarios from our past, as if in hopes of replicating that in our own generation. Marilyn certainly did.

Photographs: Above, 1931 picture of Dora Moore and Joseph Leslie Sowle in Hollywood, California; Below, Marilyn Sowle and Earle Raymond Bean at unidentified location after their 1948 wedding; both pictures currently in possession of author.

 

Postscript on Marilyn's Family Photos

 

It was a "giving back" project which started me on a path of finding "orphan" photos and putting family history research skills to work to return them to long-lost family. Genealogists have long had a tradition of volunteering to help other researchers—especially those just starting out—because we, too, were once beginners. We call it "giving back" in gratitude for what others once did to help us, or "paying it forward," knowing that one day, we too will need a hand with our brick wall research problems.

Never did I think, however, that one day I'd find myself rescuing my own family's pictures, but that is exactly what happened when I got the message that someone had found Marilyn Sowle Bean's photo collection in a local antique store.

Finding Marilyn's photos prompted me to dive deeper into a project which I had started but long ago set aside: to find any sign in her now-deceased son's family tree of the genetic origin of the disease which eventually cost him his life. I already knew there were several cousins in the family related to Marilyn's mother-in-law, Maude Woodworth Bean, who had inherited some form of Marfan Syndrome, but that there weren't any signs of the malady in the other branches of the family.

In this past month—after a research lull following my inability to find details on the month's goal for my Twelve Most Wanted ancestors—we spent the month exploring the family related to Marilyn's mother-in-law, Maude. We made it through each of Maude's four grandparents' lines—Woodworth, Williams, Farrend, and Smith—but I can't say that I located any conclusive evidence to pinpoint that deadly heritage upon any of those four lines.

Granted, seeking early deaths in a family timeline stretching back into the nineteenth century can be a tricky business. Recorded causes of death are not as accessible in those old files as they might be in a modern death certificate. Besides, given that Marfan Syndrome wasn't observed as a separate entity until it was first described by a pediatrician—by the name of Antoine Marfan, as you may have guessed—in 1896, or even used as a descriptor of that set of symptoms until 1931, there would be no mechanism for pinpointing such a cause of death in Maude's ancestors of the 1800s.

But, of course, we could still guess. Any male descendant in Maude's grandparents' lines who died as a young adult caught my eye. However, many early deaths could be ruled out by the usual explanations of that century: injuries from battle in wars, contagion from widespread diseases among them.

But there were others whose demise still left me puzzled—such as Joel Smith, the twenty year old brother of Maude's paternal grandmother. His death in 1852 was noted only by a cenotaph erected where his parents lived in Kenosha County, Wisconsin. Looking closely at the monument, a now-barely legible line after his name and date of death states "Buried in Greenwood Cemetery NY." As you might have guessed, there is more than one cemetery in New York by that name, and no, none of them produces a record of that name when searched on Find A Grave—let alone any obituary published in a New York newspaper.

Along the way in this pursuit of Marfan Syndrome in Maude Woodworth Bean's family, we did make some worthwhile discoveries. I've built out a family tree for Marilyn—yes, her side was included in this effort—and ventured beyond just the names, places, and dates to discover the stories behind the statistics.

But there is a melancholy down side to all the discoveries: there is no one left in the family with whom to share these stories. They are all gone: Marilyn, her two children, her parents and in-laws, even those cousins whose telltale height trumpeted their inheritance of Marfan Syndrome.

On the bright side, I also learned that what once might have been a very elongated death knell—after all, we all have been handed a terminal diagnosis, it's just that some of us get down to the business of it quicker than others—may now be far from such a somber diagnosis. While still a serious consideration, Marfan Syndrome is apparently now one which has been said to allow for "something approaching a normal lifespan." That is a remarkable victory.

All told, I'll still keep working on Marilyn's family photographs. As for the research goal of pinpointing family in previous generations afflicted with Marfan Syndrome, I will keep building out Maude's family tree and learning her relatives' life stories.

But this is a new month, and with the flip of a calendar page comes yet another research goal to conquer. Though I've made the unfortunate choice of piggy-backing December's goal with that of my failed November goal, we'll still review what, if anything, can be found, before moving on to more discussion on "giving back" projects and, finally, wrapping up the month with a look ahead to the new year's Twelve Most Wanted. 

An Ordinary Name Like Smith

 

Surnames can have a "Goldilocks" syndrome of their own. When they are too rare, it's hard to find enough records to facilitate a family history search. When they are too common, they bring on enough of an avalanche of resources that the researcher gets flooded with more results than can be handled. It's those surnames in the middle—not too rare, not too common—that become the sweet spot we love to find.

Today, however, is not one of those instances. This is the task I've been procrastinating until the very last moment: looking for someone with the surname Smith.

As we wrap up a month of pondering the family represented by a rescued stash of photographs—the collection once owned by Marilyn Sowle Bean—we now turn to consider a woman by the name of Eliza Smith. Remember that we are seeking any sign of who in the family might have carried the Marfan Syndrome which cost Marilyn her husband, her son, and several in-laws' children. It seemed apparent that the syndrome might have come from Marilyn's mother-in-law's side of the family, one of the lines leading to Maude Woodworth Bean.

So far, we've examined the lines of three of Maude's four grandparents: Woodworth, Williams, and Farrand. Now we need to touch on the fourth grandparent, a woman by the name of Eliza Smith.

Tracing that family line backwards in time, I nearly groaned when I learned that Maude's paternal grandmother had Smith for a maiden name. Fortunately, from that backwards-in-time vantage point, it was not Smith which I had to begin my research with, but Woodworth.

Eliza Smith Woodworth's most recent appearance in a U.S. Census record was at the turn of the century—that other century. There, in her residence in Los Angeles County, California, the mother of eight children now lived with only one other person: her husband of fifty four years, Lafayette. 

At the time of the 1900 census, Eliza stated that she had been born in New York in August of 1828. She indicated that, while her mother had also been born in New York, her father had come from Connecticut.

It is probably a good thing we were able to find Eliza in the 1900 census, for if she had died any earlier, we would have had to settle with finding her back in the 1880 census, at a point which provided us with even less information on this Smith descendant. By the time of Eliza's passing in 1905, thankfully a telegram home to family back in Wisconsin prompted an article in the hometown newspaper of the region where the Woodworths once lived before immigrating to California.

It's a good thing the Kenosha Evening News chose to be so informative about this woman who left town with her family back in 1886. The article gave her name as "Mrs. Eliza Smith Woodworth," and noted that this "pioneer resident" had been a daughter of a local man named Abraham Smith. Furthermore, the obituary listed the names of all eight of Eliza's children, three of whom still remained in the Kenosha County area in Wisconsin.

This detail will be helpful in my goal of examining whether any other branch of Maude's extended family might have exhibited signs of that same Marfan Syndrome which was so devastating to her own immediate family. I'm still working my way through the descendants of each of Eliza's children. However, what I'm curious about is Eliza's collateral lines: who were her siblings?

Thankfully, it was fairly easy to locate an Abraham Smith in Kenosha County, Wisconsin, just as Eliza's obituary had indicated. Though I lamented the newspaper's lack of mention of any siblings which might have survived her—especially those who might still be living in her hometown—I did find Abraham and his apparently large family in the 1850 census. Thankfully, I might add, as Abraham died only five years later.

Abraham Smith's household did indeed include a twenty two year old woman named Eliza Smith. The only problem with that discovery was that I already knew something about Eliza in the 1850 census: that by then, Eliza was married to Lafayette Woodworth, and was already listed elsewhere in the 1850 census as the mother of two children. Why would she be listed in two places?

 

Twins in the Family

 

If you stumbled upon the given name Mariet in your family history wanderings, and thought maybe, just maybe, that might be a hint to look for a twin sister named Harriet, you might be on the right track. That, at least, turned out to be the case when I tore through every resource I could find online concerning the roots of Maude Woodworth Bean's paternal grandfather, Civil War veteran Eugene Williams.

It had been easy enough to locate Eugene in the 1860 household of his father, Martin M. Williams, since he had mentioned upon enlisting in 1862 that his home was in Marcellon, Wisconsin. It was a snap to deduce that the Martin Williams household in the previous census, despite being in New York rather than Wisconsin, showed the same family embedded within the extended family of one Solomon Williams.

But what about Martin's wife, Eugene's mother? Unfortunately for our search, her name was mangled in the 1850 census by an enumerator with a frustrating scrawl and a hurried attempt at correcting what might initially have been a spelling error. No matter what the entry was in reality, the name provided in the 1860 census—Mary—certainly was not the same as what was noted in 1850.

With no marriage record online that I could see—presumably occurring in the state of New York, even though the woman was noted to have been born in Vermont—we're left to poke around every other possible detail we can find. This is where search engines like Google become our best friend.

This is also, as you'll see shortly, why I never flatly discard family traditions as mere hearsay. You never know when a story might turn out to have some shred of validity to it.

Let's look first at the problem spot which left me stymied with yet another contradicting report. A death record told me that a woman by the name of Mariet Williams had died in Woodbury County, Iowa, in 1887. At that point, her age was given as sixty four, which would put her year of birth around 1823. Her place of birth was reported to be Vermont.

All that would have led a researcher to think we were moving along swimmingly, except for one tiny detail: the death report indicated that this Mariet Williams was a single woman, not married.

Granted, Mariet is not Mary, and certainly not the same as "Margett"—and keep in mind the wildcard entered into this search of the detail of a "second wife" for Martin Williams—but we need to see what we can find on this death and burial information for Mariet Williams.

The death record in Iowa indicated burial would be at Elk Point in Dakota Territory. Looking at the cemetery information on Find A Grave for the location of Martin Williams' own burial, I did a search for Mariet Williams. There was indeed a burial for a Mariet E. Williams. Though the memorial didn't include any photograph of a headstone, it provided the location for the burial: "Grave 5, Lot 59, Block 4, Section 2." 

Location for Martin Williams' own burial? "Grave 4, Lot 59, Block 4, Section 2."

Granted, I can't vouch for that particular cemetery's layout scheme, but just on general principles, I'd say the two of them were buried next to each other. I'd call that husband and wife, wouldn't you?

Of course, there still is the question of whether this was the first wife or the second wife. Tracing Martin's daughter Frances to the end of her life to see what was noted for her mother's name doesn't really help. If Frances Williams Beggs had died in the county where she had last been living with her husband—Will County, Illinois—there still wouldn't have been a digital image of her death certificate, but at least the transcription would have been as thorough as it was when Charles Beggs had died on March 1 of 1931. By the end of that same month, Frances had apparently moved into the city of Chicago to be with her daughter Mima during her period of mourning. She died before that same month was out.

Cook County also provided transcriptions of the certificate information, but not as thorough a recounting of the deceased's life history as that of Will County. At least it included the name of the deceased's parents. According to the reporting party, "Mina" Beggs Neef, Frances' mother's maiden name was Elizabeth Morse. 

Not what we were expecting.

Could Mima have gotten her mother's information wrong? Might that have actually been the name of Frances' father's second wife? I won't say this is the first time I've seen a death certificate which included errors. But we can't just presume without a supporting argument, and that takes documentation.

First, let's reconstruct Martin Williams' timeline. According to his 1896 obituary, it reported that though he had died in Hand County, South Dakota, he had come to that location "a year or so ago" from Iowa, not directly from his former residence in Union County in Dakota Territory. Furthermore, he—but not any wife—was noted to have traveled from Sioux City to attend the 1890 wedding in Chicago of his granddaughter Addie Beggs. Sioux City, by the way, is located in Woodbury County, Iowa. And the 1890 occasion in Chicago would obviously have occurred after Martin had lost his wife, since Mariet died in Woodbury County in 1887.

What I'm lacking, in the face of this possible error in reporting on Mariet's daughter's—not to mention her own—death record, is any further information on who Mariet was. It would have helped to retrieve Martin and Mariet's marriage record, for instance, or any detail on Mariet's maiden name, but online resources were not providing what I was seeking.

Though I am death on copying other people's family trees, I certainly am not averse to exploring the way markers on someone else's well-documented genealogy. That is exactly what I did, looking for Martin and Mariet Williams as a family grouping. Someone had posted a link to a page in the 1888 publication, The Earle Family: Ralph Earle and His Descendants which, incredibly, included just what I was seeking: details on one Mariet Earle who had married a Martin M. Williams in 1844.

And yes, she had a twin sister named Harriet Earle.

The funny thing is, I'd known about that Earle surname for almost as long as I've done family history research. It all goes back to a story told to me by Marilyn Sowle Bean, the woman whose rescued photos prompted this month's research project. In one of the first successful genealogical interviews I ever conducted, years ago, Marilyn had told me that her husband's name was actually Earle Raymond Bean, but that he felt awkward about what seemed to be the pretentious spelling—Earle instead of the more common Earl—and had informally dropped the "e" from his given name.

What Marilyn never mentioned, but I suspected, was that "Earle" was actually a family name—in other words, a surname from somewhere back in the family's history. I had no idea it would take this long—so many losses before that one win at the antique store last spring—before I'd be prompted to actually find where that family name fit into the picture.

Now, though Marilyn and her family are no longer here for me to share this victory, I can see that the Earle surname would have provided eligibility to join the Daughters of the American Revolution through the patriot Thaddeus Earle, Mariet Earle Williams' paternal grandfather. It turns out that Marilyn's own mother-in-law Maude Woodworth Bean's Earle ancestry had a long heritage in this country. All I can do now is wonder if she ever knew.    

Of Gifts, Gratefulness, and Goals

 

This month, I've spent a lot of time working on the lines related to Marilyn Sowle Bean, the woman whose photograph collection I rescued from a local antique shop. I'm far from done, of course, but that doesn't mean I haven't worked on my own trees during this time. As we'll see in a bit, those trees did advance steadily over the past two weeks, even though I did get distracted by one thought: just like I have DNA tests and matches to guide me on my own family's trees, that is one thing I lack in working on Marilyn's trees. And there is little I can do about it; all her immediate family is gone, as well as a significant number of extended relatives on both sides of that family's tree.

I don't intend to count entries or measure my research progress on Marilyn's trees—both her own and her husband's ill-fated family plagued by Marfan Syndrome—but I'll keep working on that research goal after the month is over. Unlike other goals which I can easily return to work on in later years, I doubt this project will become cyclical in the same way.

Still, it's been a rewarding month for this review of a family long gone. Topping the list of what I've become grateful for in this project is the chance to meet a local high school student who has delved into genealogy with as much energy as I had, myself, when I was a student—and one with a practical mindset to apply that knowledge to help others, as he did in returning the first of Marilyn's photographs to me last spring.

Another gift coming from this detour from my usual research goals has been getting to meet, online, another descendant of Marilyn's ancestors. Just before Thanksgiving, someone from Marilyn's maternal roots was searching online for her family's surnames and ran across this blog. She didn't stop there, but looked for me on Ancestry.com so she could send a message. We've compared notes and, sure enough, she and Marilyn are related. Now, isn't that just the sort of serendipity that would make one wish to be able to call upon a DNA match to find even more connections?

Though I eye those reports of extracting DNA from backs of envelopes or strands of hair, I know it will be far from likely that anyone from Marilyn's immediate family would ever be represented in the current commercially-available genetic genealogy databases. And just like this month's research goal, those hopes will fade away as we move on from November's task to December's goal.

In the meantime, those progress report numbers keep churning away in the background. For my in-laws' tree, this past two weeks saw 191 new names added to bring the total number of individuals represented there to 24,384. In my own tree, I fared exactly the same—and no, I didn't plan that. This past biweekly effort also brought in 191 new names to grow that tree to 26,975 individuals.

As we move into the last month of the year, my thoughts turn to plans for next year's goals. In addition to tackling my December goal—and wrapping up a few details on my quest on behalf of Marilyn's long-gone family—since people have asked, I'll be discussing my thoughts on how I set up an annual research plan. After all, before we know it, we'll be in that post-holiday lull spanning the end of this year and the start of a new one, and it will be time to spring into new projects once again. 

On to the Bright and Shiny

 

Some research tasks may seem rather perfunctory, especially the deeper we genealogists dig into the documentation. On the contrary, in the case of my research goal for this month, inspired by recovering Marilyn Sowle Bean's photograph collection from a local antique store, I've been attempting to pinpoint the line in her son's pedigree from which he inherited the genetic syndrome which eventually caused his death. With such a mission, the mood can sometimes turn somber, so it's no surprise that I yearn for a diversion. Stumbling upon a brief mention in another obituary caught my attention, and before I knew it, I was off chasing the kind of detail that family historians call a Bright Shiny Object.

The explanation yesterday served merely as the set up for today's pitch: background information to provide perspective on what I found regarding Maude Woodworth Bean's maternal grandfather, Eugene Williams. Now that we've established that connection, it's on to the Bright Shiny Object which pulled me away from this month's research goal.

The BSO was actually a line buried in the 1964 obituary for Maude's mother, Effie Williams. Effie, in turn, was daughter of the man we discussed yesterday, Eugene Williams. Effie had married her teenaged sweetheart William Woodworth in 1890, who had traveled home to Iowa to claim his bride and return to his family's new home in southern California. When William died in 1928, it didn't take Effie long to pack up the family's remaining belongings and move north to be closer to her oldest daughter Nieva.

Nieva had, by the time of her father's death, married, birthed two children, moved to Fresno where she and her husband Fred Searcey welcomed two more children—then lost one—and apparently divorced. Not quite one month after William Woodworth's death, Nieva was married again, this time to Joel Chamberlain.

Perhaps in all the turmoil, it seemed a reasonable move for Effie to head to Fresno to help her daughter with her young family. Whatever the reason was, we learn from Effie's obituary in 1964 that she had been a resident of Fresno since 1930.

There was one other detail to learn from that newspaper entry. Though the obituary was far less a biographical sketch than was her husband's in 1928, it provided one fact I hadn't gleaned from any other source. After mentioning that Effie was born in Jefferson in what is now the state of South Dakota, the article added this point:

She was a member of the Daughters of Union Veterans of the Civil War, Camp No. 8.

You can be sure a statement like that turned into a Bright Shiny Object for a lineage society junkie like me. Finding that, I was off, searching the website of the Daughters of Union Veterans for any sign of their member Effie Williams Woodworth—or at least a token entry honoring her Civil War veteran father.

I found nothing. No sign, even, of "Camp No. 8"—or any explanation to learn how to convert that old terminology to the current usage of "tents" for chapters.

Could that mention in the obituary just have been a family myth? I've learned it is not uncommon for families to pass along romanticized stories of their ancestors, and perhaps I had just stumbled upon such an example. Whether Effie was a member of the Daughters of Union Veterans, I couldn't say from an initial search, but yesterday's exploration into the records of Eugene Williams' last years showed clearly that he was being provided medical services as if, as a veteran, he had been entitled to them. What else could I find to support that statement?

To their credit, the Daughters of Union Veterans included a helps page on their website. Though their website also provided a tutorial for how to search a second website for veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic, the only Williams entries I could find were for other individuals. Still, the tutorial indicated the possibility that more photographs and biographical sketches would be added in the future—in other words, this was far from a complete listing. There had to be more information to confirm whether Eugene Williams had, indeed, served where his last records reported he had.

Sure enough, taking this question to the search engines—after all, what is a Bright Shiny Object for, if not to pursue?—there were several resources to confirm his involvement in the Union army. Prime among them was not only Eugene's application for a pension based on his service, but his widow's request for benefits after his death. His July 1890 original filing likely followed his attendance at his Company's reunion meeting in Milwaukee at the end of the previous August. The reason his name was included in the printed program for the 1907 reunion—as not in attendance—was likely because he and his wife, Elizabeth, had made the long journey to live in California recently enough that his address was still reported, in error, to have been in Sioux City, Iowa.

So what was Eugene Williams' Civil War story? Enlisting August 15, 1862, at Portage, Wisconsin, he served as a private in Company C of the 23rd regiment of the Wisconsin Infantry. Sure enough, thanks to a reprint of the names of men in that regiment posted at Internet Archive, we learn Eugene Williams was then a resident of Marcellon, Wisconsin, only about ten miles to the east of the town where he enlisted—a valuable clue in tracing his earlier history.

As to his experiences during the war, we don't have the privilege of preserved letters sent home like some researchers have found, but there are ample resources to trace the movements and duties of his regiment from that point until the close of the war. Wikipedia includes a brief entry on the 23rd regiment, and the wiki at FamilySearch.org provides an overview, complete with referrals to other resources. A website called the Civil War Archive provides a brief history of each regiment from each state, including Eugene's regiment from Wisconsin, and the National Park Service website includes an overview, as well. The Wisconsin Historical Society website does the same for those companies from their own state.

That whirlwind tour of available resources to trace the movements of Eugene Williams' comrades in their tour of duty was far more information than I'd need to just confirm basic details of his life, of course, but hey, this is a Bright Shiny Object, and I'm a history buff. Information is out there, if we want to learn—and are willing to test the search waters with available technological tools.

All told, at the close of the war, Eugene was discharged on July 4, 1865, in the place where he had last been serving: Mobile, Alabama. From there, it was the long trip back to Wisconsin, but that was not the last stop for this nineteen year old corporal. Yet, as easy as it was to trace Eugene Williams' movements in his nearly three years of service, finding his next steps wouldn't be quite so clearly laid out.

What About the Williams Line?

 

Sometimes, family history research takes the form of speed searching. That certainly was the case when I took a whirlwind tour through the Williams line of Maude Woodworth Bean's maternal grandfather. My goal—the overarching goal of this month's research—is to see which line related to the Woodworths might have passed along the Marfan Syndrome which manifested itself in Maude's sons, nephews, and even grandson.

Speed searching through the paternal line of Maude's mother Effie Aurilla Williams didn't point to any lives tragically cut short in their prime—although, oddly enough, there were a couple spouses who did die at a relatively young age. However, one unexpected discovery emerged as I read through the marriage announcements and obituaries for the various Williams relatives.

Effie's brother Arthur Williams had three sons, one of whom—Ray—held a bachelor's degree in music and was noted to have served as soloist at his younger brother's wedding. (Considering this musical bent in the family, I couldn't help but wonder whether that youngest brother's name—he often went by "A. Minor Williams"—wasn't an inside joke in the family.)

The mention of musical talent in the family caught my attention for two reasons. First, the former owner of the photographs I had rescued from a local antique shop, Marilyn Sowle Bean, had a musically talented son, herself. That was the son who lost his life to Marfan Syndrome.

Then, too, in Marilyn's photographs was a picture of her brother-in-law—Sam, the poodle trainer for the Ice Follies, who also died of Marfan Syndrome—playing his guitar and singing with friends at an informal evening gathering. The family had always left me the impression that somehow such well-developed talents as this were a hallmark of the syndrome, but here was an example of musicality minus malady.

While the propensity to perform artistically may have been passed down to Marilyn's son and brother-in-law from the Williams' line, in my rapid-fire race through the Williams pedigree, it didn't appear there was any sign of Marfan Syndrome in that side of the family.

However, as often happens in such searches, there were a few other details of interest that I'd like to pause and examine. Call it the Bright Shiny Object Syndrome if you will, but before we judge such a dalliance, let's just call it productive exploration and grant a day's lenience to explore a bit more about the Williams line.

Above: Photograph of Maude Woodworth Bean's son Sam playing the guitar at an informal outdoor gathering; undated picture from the collection of Marilyn Sowle Bean.

Maude's Mom

 

It may have been a stash of family photographs found in a local antique shop which prompted me to tell the story of their previous owner, Marilyn Sowle Bean, but it was the tragic legacy bequeathed upon Marilyn's husband, brother-in-law and, eventually, her own son which has me searching through Marilyn's mother-in-law's family tree.

Maude Woodworth Bean apparently was a carrier of a once-deadly disease known as Marfan Syndrome, the cause of the untimely deaths of the men in the Bean family. Prompted by that—plus the serendipitous discovery of those family pictures—I've been trawling through the Bean pedigree to see if I could pinpoint which branch of the family might have contributed the unfortunate tendency.

We've already explored the paternal Bean family briefly, but having discovered the same malady in the descendants of Maude's brother's family, we've lately been seeking signs in Maude's own Woodworth family. Though over a century ago there were some childhood deaths on the Woodworth side, there certainly were also some long-lived relatives, as well. But what about Maude's mom? We need to explore that branch of Maude's story, as well.

It was thanks to Maude's father's obituary—a personal history encased within a funeral announcement—that we can glean the timeline of when William Woodworth married his wife. Though as a teenager, William had moved to southern California with his parents, Lafayette and Eliza Smith Woodworth, he did not forget the sweetheart he had left behind in Sioux City, Iowa. He returned there to marry her on October 27, 1890, and bring her home with him to Covina, California.

From the actual record of their marriage, we learn that William's bride—eventually, Maude's mother—was named Effie A. Williams. Though I've been able, from other family records, to determine that the middle initial "A" stood for Aurilla, I have yet to discover any other first name than what seems to be more nickname than formal given name.

According to the Sioux City marriage record, Effie was twenty years of age at her wedding, having said her nuptial vows on the same day as her birthday. However, from other records, it looks like she was actually nineteen at the point when she said "I do."

There was another discrepancy on the marriage register in Sioux City which caused a bit more research difficulty than the year of Effie's birth. Her father's name—Eugene—might have been clearly inscribed in the register, but her mother's maiden name looked like Elizabeth Ferrard. Or was it Ferrara?

Elizabeth it may have been—we can see that thirty years later in Elizabeth's own obituary. Unfortunately, though Mrs. Williams' obituary named her pallbearers and even the names of the soloists rendering her favorite hymns at the funeral, not one mention was made of the deceased's survivors, other than the daughter—"Mrs. W. C. Woodworth"—in whose home she had passed. It took quite a bit of exploration to realize that neither Ferrard nor Ferrara was her actual maiden name.

To explore the possibility that Marfan Syndrome may have made its appearance in Effie's family, rather than Maude's paternal Woodworth line, of course we don't need to start with her mother's pedigree. We can search first among the Williams kin. That will buy me more time to explore the possibilities for Elizabeth's maiden name. In the meantime, we'll examine what we can find on the paternal side of Maude's mother's family.

 

Above: Inset from register of marriages from Woodbury County, Iowa, showing the October 1890 entry representing Effie A. Williams, bride of William Woodworth; courtesy Ancestry.com.

"The Ranch on Vincent Street"

 

Nothing can make our ancestors' stories come to life quite like being able to walk on the actual land where they once lived. That is the sort of magic which will fuel a once-in-a-lifetime trip across continents and oceans to experience for ourselves just the slightest slice of life for our forebears.

Though I can't make the trip just now to the property in southern California where Maude Woodworth grew up—though it certainly is a closer journey than what our family planned in 2014 for our pursuit of my father-in-law's Irish roots—there is a next-best option available. We can look up the Woodworth property on plat maps of the county.

That, at least, was the idea I was pursuing when I read in Maude's father's obituary that he had settled with his parents in the region near Covina in 1886. In that 1928 obituary, the Covina Argus had called him "a pioneer of the Azusa valley" and mentioned that the family had farmed "the ranch on Vincent street" which sometime before William's passing had become property of a Reynolds family.

It just so happens that the United States Library of Congress has an extensive map collection which includes some plat maps for locations across the country. Since the Woodworths had settled in Los Angeles County, I felt chances were good that the Library of Congress would include such a map in their collection.

Rather than search directly through the Library of Congress website, I used Google to direct me to the closest possibilities. I found three: one map drawn in 1877, another in 1888, and a third in 1898.

I already knew from William Woodworth's obituary that the 1877 map would be of no use in answering my question, so I tried the 1888 map. Though there were surnames inserted on many of the properties, others were identified only by numbers or letters. Bottom line for me: no sign of any Woodworth property. Not even any familiar names on the few labeled streets.

Trying the 1898 map didn't yield any better results. By then, the map revealed just how much development was occurring in the area as even back then, the push to move to the "suburbs" was gaining headway.

That's when it occurred to me that I had, years ago, found an unlabeled photograph in the collection of Bill Bean, Maude's brother-in-law. It was one of many pictures he had of men working in rugged California terrain, which for some reason I long ago got into my head might have been the Woodworths working their land in the San Gabriel mountains of southern California. Of course, I have no basis for that assumption—Bill Bean wasn't even a relative of Maude's family—but that is just an example of how things get stuck in one's head. I kept looking on the plat maps for property closer to the hills, when Covina itself, their stated residence, was not as close to the mountains as are some other cities in Los Angeles County.

With that, it became obvious that, though I drive through the area with regularity on my visits down south, I can't let assumptions drive my research. It was time to stop pursuing the trail and take a research break to bone up on some local history of the area which eventually became the city of Covina.

 

Photograph above: undated picture of three unidentified men in work clothes (with a fourth seated behind them) stopping on a hillside in California. Though this photo was from the collection of Maude Woodworth Bean's brother-in-law William Bean, I often wondered whether this represented members of the Woodworth family.

Maude's Siblings — Surviving or Not

 

When a death-dealing malady strikes many members of a family, the question may evolve: where did it come from?

In the case of Marilyn Sowle Bean's family—the family whose photographs were rescued from a local antique shop—the effects of Marfan Syndrome may have been a mainstay for many generations. Marilyn's son certainly succumbed at a young age—in his thirties, thanks to medical advances during his early twenties which granted him another decade more than his dad had. Then, too, besides Marilyn's husband, her brother-in-law Sam, the poodle trainer for the Shipstads and Johnson Ice Follies touring shows, also was felled by the same syndrome.

But what about previous generations? We've already observed that Marfan Syndrome likely entered the family through the line of Maude Woodworth Bean, Marilyn's mother-in-law. Maude's brother Lucius certainly had several sons afflicted by the same malady. But was it owing to Maude's and Lucius' father William Woodworth? Or his wife, Effie Aurilla Williams?

Before answering that question, I was curious to see whether anyone else in Maude's generation might have showed signs of the illness. According to Maude's father's obituary, William and Effie were parents of six children, of whom only three survived beyond the year of William's death in 1928. Of those six, I can only trace five, making me wonder whether the sixth child might have died in infancy.

The five of William's children faced varying fates, though none of them seemed to manifest Marfan Syndrome personally. Eldest daughter Nieva, born in 1892, lived to be a respectable ninety one years of age, hardly the symptom of a malady like Marfan Syndrome. Married twice, Nieva had four children, two of whom lived until at least retirement age, though one three-year-old son died and one daughter I could not trace beyond her twenties. Perhaps there is a story hidden there.

The second daughter of William and Effie, however, died at ten years of age. Though I can't yet find any record stating cause of death for Irma Woodworth, the early age of death might be a clue—or perhaps just an expected outcome for a childhood which ended in 1907.

The youngest child of William and Effie also died at a relatively young age. However, rather than signalling another death due to Marfan Syndrome, Helen Woodworth's death in 1921 at the age of twenty one was due to quite different and tragic circumstances.

So did Maude and Lucius merely serve as carriers of the Syndrome? Though each of them died at relatively young ages—Maude at thirty five and Lucius at forty five—it is likely their deaths were results of other maladies. The next step is to take a close look at each of Maude's parents and their related lines. We'll remain with the Woodworth family for yet another generation tomorrow to see whether we can find any telltale signs of Marfan Syndrome in their history.  

Missed by Moments

 

Do you ever discover—only too late to do anything about it right now—that the place you're passing by once held significance for your family history?

Too late to reroute plans now, I've just discovered that not only does a location barely half an hour's drive from my overnight stop represent the land farmed by particular members of the town's "pioneer" settlers—Maude Woodworth's parents and paternal grandparents—but that its history is apparently well preserved by the region's own historical society.

Yes, unfortunately, I and my hard-working husband are headed in an entirely different direction and are on a timetable. Rest assured, I've already written yet another "note to self" to contact the Covina Valley Historical Society to see what they might have contained in their collection regarding the Woodworth family. I may have missed by moments the decision point for visiting the Society's archived collection today, but there will be another trip in the future.

It was from one of those obituaries we all wish we could find more of that I gleaned a fairly complete history of Maude Woodworth Bean's parents. After her father's passing in 1928, the Covina Argus published an informative obituary for the "Well Known Valley Pioneer." From that came a straightforward timeline of William C. Woodworth's life.

Maude lost her father on May 22, 1928, when she was thirty years of age. Granted, by then, she was married to Samuel Bean, but she doubtless was still close to her father, with whom she had claimed a fairly close relationship before she left to attend the California School for the Blind in northern California.

At the time of his passing, W. C. Woodworth was sixty years old—a respectable age, given the time period in which he lived. Though his obituary gave no hint of the illness which caused his death, it is doubtful it would have been related to the Marfan Syndrome which later felled two of his grandsons at a much younger age. Still, the obituary mentioned that three of his children predeceased him, a clue to follow next week.

The obituary also revealed that William Woodworth came to California with his parents in 1886, settling on "the ranch on Vincent Street" in Covina which eventually became his responsibility for years, until it became the property of the Reynolds family. Finding a plat map of the region will help bring that picture to life, as "Vincent Street" has undoubtedly undergone massive changes since that bucolic era.

Soon after the Woodworth family moved to California, William returned to his former home in Sioux City, Iowa, to seek the hand of Effie Aurilla Williams in marriage in the fall of 1890. Yet even Sioux City had only been his residence for three years, as the family came there from the former town of Bristol in Kenosha County, Wisconsin, where William was born, twenty five years before his wedding.

As obituaries often do, William's last mention in the Covina newspaper was well endowed with names of surviving family members, as well as giving honor to his by-then deceased parents, Lafayette and Eliza Woodworth. This will give us working orders to help delve further into the question of whether Marfan Syndrome made its appearance in the lines of any of Maude's siblings or ancestors as it had in her own children. We'll take a closer look at the details next week. 

 

Clues From Maude's Own Story

 

Though Maude Woodworth died long before Marilyn Bean could ever have met her, the reason why so many people in Marilyn's family subsequently died at a young age may be encapsulated in Maude's own brief story. That likely was also the reason why Maude's likeness did not show up in the photo collection I rescued from Marilyn's sold belongings.

Marilyn Bean's mother-in-law, Maude, had married the most unlikely of eligible bachelors. Samuel William Bean had been born perfectly healthy, and would probably have gone on to become a successful businessman like his twin brother, except for one chance mishap in his teens. Though the family passed down two conflicting stories on the event, for whatever reason, we know that Sam had been injured by a flying object striking him in the eye.

In that era pre-dating the advent of antibiotics—Sam was born in 1896—the infection which began in his eye spread to the other eye, and eventually also to his ears. All told, the injury rendered the teenaged Sam both blind and deaf, a devastating blow to anyone.

It was at the California school for the blind and deaf that Sam Bean eventually met Maude Woodworth. When they were both in their early twenties, the story of their 1921 marriage was carried by newspapers across the country—as far away, for instance, as Alabama and Connecticut.

To think that their two surviving sons—Sam junior arriving later that same year, and twins Earle and the short-lived infant Merle in 1926—might have been afflicted with any malady, a reasonable guess for anyone not knowing the family's story might have been to think of vision problems. After all, the reason that brought both Sam and Maude to the same school in their teen years was their loss of eyesight.

That was not the case, though knowing more about Maude's family might have made answering such a question more complicated. A newspaper article I found through the index to the Redwood City, California, Schellens Collection, a clipping from the January 13, 1921, edition of the city's newspaper, the Standard, mentioned that Maude became interested in teaching the blind when she was a girl growing up on her father's orange grove in southern California. Her father, William C. Woodworth, was also blind, and in her younger years, Maude had served as his "steady companion for many years."

If Maude's father had vision problems, and then Maude herself manifested a similar difficulty, it might stand to reason that Maude's sons would carry the same proclivity, but that was not what afflicted them. It was, as we've already noted, Marfan Syndrome which claimed Maude's sons' lives. But somehow, the Woodworth side of the equation is still the one to follow in pursuing this question, for the Woodworth cousins we discussed yesterday also manifested the same obvious outward signs of the malady.

Tomorrow, we'll follow Maude's story back another generation to William C. Woodworth and Effie Aurilla Williams, to see whether we can find any further signs of Marfan Syndrome in the family lines.

Photograph above: Samuel W. Bean and his wife, the former Maude M. Woodworth. Undated portrait encased in glass, most likely from the 1920s, now in the possession of the author.

Meeting the Woodworths

 

Some distant relatives we meet may be those we soon forget. In the case of Marilyn Sowle Bean, last keeper of the family photos recently spotted at a local antique shop, some of her in-laws were absolutely unforgettable. I know; I've had the opportunity to meet them, too.

It was the Woodworth family who visibly demonstrated the impact of Marfan Syndrome upon the extended family. My first chance to meet them was on an outing to the Sacramento area, where Marilyn's mother-in-law's brother's sons were honoring their mother on the occasion of her birthday.

If that description of the family's relationships seems convoluted, there is a reason for the elongated connections: so many of the men in the family—and one woman—had long since died. The extended family, however, still kept in touch, which is probably why I, through my connection with Marilyn's son, ended up on the invitation list.

Long gone was Marilyn's mother-in-law, the former Maude Woodworth, who died in 1933. Gone also was Maude's brother Lucius Woodworth, who followed his older sister less than seven years afterward.

Lucius' wife, the petite and perky Canadian, Margaret Isabelle Frizzell, however, outlasted them all by decades. It may well have been her eightieth birthday upon which the six sons of "Aunt Belle" had gathered to honor their mother. As family gatherings often do, the event was not complete without a photo taken of dear mom and her sons. As I remember it, the picture basically amounted to Aunt Belle standing with three sons on either side, her head reaching about as high as their belt buckles. Not all of them may have been afflicted with Marfan Syndrome, but each one certainly claimed the telltale height.

It didn't really take a genealogist to figure there was something inherited from that Woodworth side of the family which made each of the male descendants stand out in a crowd. However, was it from Maude's paternal line where the Marfan Syndrome came? Or from her mother's Williams line? I hadn't really traced Maude's family history back beyond the next two generations.

Now that I'm revisiting Marilyn's reclaimed photo collection, I may as well take this as a prompt to see what else can be found on her mother-in-law's Woodworth and Williams families.  

What got me Started

 

Anybody who has arrived early in a doctor's office to complete requisite paperwork before that first consultation will be able to relate to what I'm going to discuss today. Remember all those questions about which diseases you've suffered through—or hardly remember having? The questions which push farther back to the ailments of ancestors might be enough to make one wish there was a way to merge medical history with a pedigree chart. And that's what got me started in genealogy—with the Bean family tree, that is.

While some people might worry about high cholesterol leading to a massive heart attack or stroke—just like dear old dad—someone in the Bean family had passed along a medical inheritance just as deadly, but not as well known. I didn't even need to draw up a pedigree chart to see how far that genetic tendency had spread in this family. Though Marilyn Sowle Bean—last keeper of the family photos rescued from a local antique store—didn't suffer from the ailment herself, her husband, his brother, and several others on the maternal side of that Bean family were struck dead in their early adulthood. Or, surviving beyond that age, they suffered so much, they wish they had been.

That tragic legacy became part of the family's story. To learn the Bean family history was to learn about Marfan Syndrome and its hallmark sign—in this family, at least—of elongated limbs and exceptional height. On the human side of the story, that meant a great deal of loss for all those who married into that family line, Marilyn included. On a more technical side—at least for a genealogy researcher like me—I wondered whether I could pinpoint the family line to which the syndrome could be attributed, or even if, going back through history, it would be possible to trace such a tendency.

There are, of course, special symbols which can be included in a medically-oriented pedigree chart, such as this example from a 2008 publication by Genetic Alliance shared on the website of the National Center for Biotechnology Information. While I could use such an approach in tracing the family members afflicted with Marfan Syndrome, my question slanted more toward the genealogy than the genetic. I want to see if I could follow the correct family line through several more generations.

To do that means first to focus on the relatives in this family whom I once knew personally: Marilyn's nephews on her mother-in-law's side of the family, the Woodworths.