Where the Mitochondrial DNA Trail Leads

 

Sometimes, the connections found between distant family members can be surprising. Not long after I began this month's research project, I discovered my mother-in-law's matriline connected her with women living in colonial Maryland, reaching as far back in time as the mid-1600s. Now, reversing the process, I'm searching for descendants of those ancestral women who are considered an "exact match" to my mother-in-law's mitochondrial DNA signature. The trail this hunt has led me on so far has yielded some surprises.

The trail began with my mother-in-law's sixth great-grandmother, Elizabeth Duvall who, with her husband William Ridgely, gave the mitochondrial world eleven daughters whose multiple female descendants could possibly number well into the hundreds by the time of our current generation.

I started this mitochondrial chase with Elizabeth's daughter Martha Ridgely, sister of our direct line ancestor, Rachel Ridgely. The reason for this choice was simple: when researching ancestors in the 1600s, it is not easy to find mention of the women we are seeking.

In Martha's case, however, I was fortunate. One mention in a book—Joshua Dorsey Warfield's The Founders of Anne Arundel and Howard Counties, Maryland—revealed that Martha had married Henry Gaither. Henry, in turn, eventually became known as a D.A.R. Patriot.

From Martha and Henry, it was onward to following their daughters. First on my list—again, because I could find records for this—was their daughter Mary Gaither who, through marriage with another well-known family in Maryland, became the wife of Orlando Griffith Dorsey. The next generation brought yet another Mary, by then moved from Maryland to Kentucky, where Mary Dorsey became wife of John Carr.

Fortunately, this line from Martha to Mary to daughter Mary produced a family which once again included daughters. The mitochondrial line was still going strong.

That was where we met Mary and John Carr's daughter Mary Elizabeth Carr, wife of John Fenley. She it was who met that tragic end in the Quincy horror which claimed so many lives from the Fenley family. Though that appalling story permanently removed any chance of Mary Elizabeth Carr's mtDNA passing to future generations, Mary Elizabeth did have sisters.

Of course, I traced those lines, as well. I wanted to see where the mtDNA would land in the current generation. Unfortunately, I didn't find much to keep me going. Since Mary Elizabeth herself was born in 1819, the chances of finding her along with any other sisters in their parents' household by the time of the 1850 census—the first enumeration providing names of each resident in the household—would be slim. After all, Mary Elizabeth herself had been married to John Fenley in 1838. Still, I found three sisters: Martha, Laura, and Harriet.

Of those three, Martha married James T. Edmunds of Louisville, Kentucky, and had only sons. Laura married Benjamin Honoré and, though having what sounded like a fascinating life in both Chicago and Sarasota, Florida, had no children at all. Third sister Harriet died young—and unmarried—leaving me with no further leads.

Except.

I kept finding these mentions of another Honoré man who was somehow associated with the Carr family. Somehow, there had to be another Carr daughter to connect with this man. It wasn't until I went looking for the mother's own obituary—Mary Dorsey Carr died in 1883—that I finally found some leads.

What was strange was that Mary Carr's death notice appeared in multiple newspapers across the country. Much like had happened almost a decade later when her daughter Mary Elizabeth and the many Fenley family members died in the Quincy trail derailment, the elder Mary's story was carried by newswire services. 

One eight-line insertion, ironically carried in a Baltimore newspaper, simply read:

Mrs. Mary Carr, one of the oldest citizens of Louisville, Ky., died in that city Wednesday, aged eighty-nine years. She was well-known in New York, Chicago and other places. Mrs. Henry Honoré, of Chicago, was a daughter of Mrs. Carr, while Mrs. Fred. Grant and Mrs. Potter Palmer, of Chicago, were her granddaughters.

Who was Henry Honoré? And Potter Palmer? Just in case I'd get lucky, I started my search for answers with a quick visit to Google. Turns out, Henry was not only brother-in-law to Laura, wife of his brother Benjamin, but both couples moved from Louisville, where Henry became better known as Chicago real estate developer Henry Harrison Honoré. Also joining in the move to Chicago was Henry's bride, Mary Carr's daughter Eliza Jane Carr.

Passing that old Duvall mtDNA down yet another generation, Eliza became mother to daughters Bertha and Ida Marie. Bertha—who eventually became an astute businesswoman in her own right—married millionaire Chicago businessman, Potter Palmer. Her sister Ida Marie became wife of Frederick Dent Grant, oldest son of General—and later, President—Ulysses S. Grant.

While Bertha was mother to two sons, Ida Marie did have one daughter, Julia. Once again, this subsequent generation presented an unexpected trip further down the Duvall matriline. While traveling in Europe with her aunt Bertha, Julia met—and eventually married—Prince Mikhail Mikhailovich Cantacuzène. At the time of their 1899 wedding, he was a Russian nobleman, general and diplomat under the imperial order of the tsar.

Once again, that mtDNA line survived another generation, with Julia and her husband escaping the turmoil of the Russian Revolution and returning to the United States with their family, which included two daughters, one of whom eventually had two daughters of her own.

Despite the count of passing generations, that mitochondrial DNA might still be preserved in that line, even possibly without mutation, from the point at which I first began the genealogical chase with Elizabeth Duvall in colonial Maryland. Somehow, though, I doubt I'll see any of those names among the exact matches to my mother-in-law's mtDNA.

What Happened to Elizabeth

 

Sometimes, there are family stories so horrible, so painful, that those who lived through the trauma cannot bear, even years after the fact, to pass the tale along to the next generation. I wonder whether Elizabeth Fenley's story might have been one such example.

Elizabeth was a young six years of age when her family planned a delightful summer outing. The plan was for the extended family to take the train from their home in Louisville, Kentucky, to a favorite summer vacation spot in New England: Nantucket. From there, they planned to stop in Boston before returning home at the end of the summer.

While the vacation at the seashore may have been lovely, especially for Elizabeth, her sisters, and her cousin, the short train ride to Boston didn't end quite as well. The flurry of news reports about the train derailment near Quincy, Massachusetts, included mentions of the tragic outcome for the extended Fenley family—but apparently in the rush to get the "scoop" on the story, journalists confused the many Fenley names among the casualties.

Though several newspapers across the midwest published lists of the deceased passengers, it appeared that Mrs. Oscar Fenley was listed as the grandmother, for instance, when she was actually the mother of the three Fenley daughters. The confusion was never so obvious as when the Indianapolis newspaper published—on the same date and page—two articles regarding young Elizabeth Fenley.

After stating that "Elizabeth Fenley, four years old, died at the hospital," only inches below that column, the paper reported that "Elizabeth Fenley, aged six" was not at the hospital—where space was limited due to the immense number of injuries after the crash—but at the home of one "Mrs. Carr on Hancock street." Furthermore, "the little girl is badly scalded, and the doctor says her condition is such that he does not think she can live."

While the two reports contained discrepancies on not only her condition but her age, there was only one child involved in that train wreck by the name of Elizabeth Fenley. That she did not die immediately after the crash can be corroborated by Elizabeth's Find a Grave memorial, which was dated years later. However, the 1915 date on her headstone reveals yet another tragedy for the Fenley family.

A Find a Grave volunteer posted an explanation of what had followed for Elizabeth after she survived the horrors of the Quincy train derailment. Though badly scalded on the lower half of her body—injuries which took two months to resolve before she was able to travel back home to Kentucky again—she did return to Louisville with her father, who had not been with the Fenley family for that summer excursion, but came north to be with his daughter during her two-month-long recuperation. Only after their arrival home again was a memorial service conducted for the six Fenley family members who had died.

After the November funeral, it was said that Elizabeth never fully recovered from the effects of the train wreck. Her father, then president of the National Bank of Kentucky and a board member of the United States Regional Reserve Bank, provided for her in every way he could, including arranging for private schooling in Philadelphia and New York, and attendance at Bryn Mawr. Despite all that could be done for Elizabeth, by about 1912, she had been in bad health and was said to have been "on the verge of a nervous breakdown" when she traveled to New York, seeking treatment from a "nerve specialist."

From a headline in the New York Tribune on September 15, 1915, stating "Woman Killed in 8-Story Leap," the sad story of the culmination of Elizabeth's anguish was detailed. Wearing a blue taffeta dress and a hat with an ostrich plume, which she laid at the top of the stairway before her jump, Elizabeth made her irrevocable choice.

An unnamed aunt had been the last known person to have been with Elizabeth, as Elizabeth had seen her off at the train station that very afternoon before her tragic decision. Receiving the news by telegram, Elizabeth's father Oscar Fenley "collapsed and required medical attention throughout the night." The burden of what the Tribune had noted as an "appalling" tragedy of years prior which the Fenley family had suffered through had claimed yet another victim so many years later.

So many times, when we learn of tragedies borne by our ancestors, we may telescope the events into points on a timeline, rather than see them as the ongoing burden borne by those who survived. But those who remained had to continue living life with the pain of the experience. It is experiences like those which change us, point our life's trajectory in a different direction. Though such stories may have been too painful for our ancestors to tell, that is the stuff that became their reality—and a lens through which we can only attempt to understand them by.     

Asking Questions to Find the Rest of the Story

 

It was Mary Elizabeth Carr Fenley whose sudden death in Quincy, Massachusetts, plagued me with questions. Though I only this week had found the woman's name and family constellation, it seemed odd that a woman in 1890 would have died so far from home. I had to find the rest of that story.

Seeing her name on the death register, listed for Quincy as was often done during that time period—line by line on one page for the same month and year—revealed that Mary was not the only Fenley who had died on the same day. Delving further into the records, I could see there were others with different surnames among the dead that day who had also come from Mary's home in Louisville, Kentucky.

Despite having the help of archived newspaper collections to learn more about the cause of Mary's sudden death—and that of the other Fenley family members who lost their lives in that horrific twenty four hour period—there were some challenges to piece together who was who. Newspaper reporters, as we've seen in the past, can make mistakes.

Especially considering the sheer numbers of dead and injured in the train wreck which precipitated the loss of their lives, I certainly understand how the surrounding circumstances might have mangled reporters' ability to keep lists of casualties straight. It was back to the genealogical drawing board for me, after reading as many news articles as I could find, to sketch out the true relationships of the Fenley family members involved.

Mary, herself, was widow of John Norris Fenley, and mother of traveling companion Mary Fenley Abbott, who was accompanied by her husband, William. The party also included Mary's daughter-in-law Alice Short Fenley and her daughters, Mary's grandchildren Elizabeth, Mary Catherine, and Alice. Rounding out the party was another of Mary's granddaughters, Susan Fenley, daughter of Mary's son William.

All but son-in-law William Abbott and granddaughter Elizabeth died in the Quincy train tragedy within twenty four hours of its occurrence in August that year of 1890. Even so, both William and his niece Elizabeth were badly injured, marks which they bore through the rest of their lives and which, apparently, brought the young girl Elizabeth much anguish over the remainder of her brief life.

Before answering the question of exactly how—and why—I stumbled upon this family's unbearable loss, we'll first need to take a closer look at Elizabeth's story, tomorrow.  

The Quincy Horror

 

The end of summer was drawing to a close, and nine friends and family members from Louisville, Kentucky, were wrapping up their vacation at Nantucket with a quick train ride to Boston on the appropriately named Old Colony Railroad.

Among those in the traveling party were Judge I. W. Edwards, and the wife and family of Oscar Fenley, then president of the National Bank of Kentucky, who was to join the group shortly.

While the train was en route to Boston that August in 1890, unbeknownst to the passengers—and likely, the train's engineer, as well—some section hands had been working on the tracks beyond a curve in the route. They were using what was called a "track jack" which, left in place as the train approached—having received no safety warning from the workmen—caused a derailment ejecting passengers from their seats. 

The immediate derailment caused the steam engine to rupture, sending steam into the passenger compartment, further injuring those who had not been killed upon impact. Those passengers who could assisted the injured others outside to safety, and eventually help arrived to attend to the medical emergencies.

The local hospital in nearby Quincy, Massachusetts, was overwhelmed with the amount of medical care which needed to be provided. One newspaper report remarked, "No tongue can describe the scene at the city hospital."

Meanwhile, news wire services had picked up the story, as many of the travelers were from homes hundreds of miles from Quincy. Reports of the train catastrophe kept adding to the count of dead and injured at the scene—newspapers carried the story, dubbed The Quincy Horror, across the midwest, like Erie, Pennsylvania, and Indianapolis, Indiana. Many newspapers focused their reports on victims of the crash who were residents of their own city, such as this report from Cleveland, Ohio. Continued stories updated the count of the dead. To add insult to injury, some stories revealed that pickpockets worked the scene of the crash as well, lifting watches, jewelry, and money from victims too dazed to respond.

I wouldn't have known about this train wreck in Quincy, Massachusetts, in 1890 if it weren't for one detail: my search to outline the descendants of one woman from colonial Maryland. Among those many dead and injured, one family stood out in news reports for their collective losses that day: the Fenley family from Louisville, Kentucky, the very family I had been researching from my mother-in-law's colonial roots. We'll piece together that list of casualties tomorrow, and see how they fit into the family constellation.