A New Month, a New Goal

 

Welcome to August. With as abrupt a start to a month as any—arriving promptly on a Monday, no less—August may be for some the signal to return to school. Or take a last-gasp-of-summer vacation trip. Or be sociable and meet the neighbors for National Night Out.

For me? It's time to face the music with one aggravating family history brick wall: the line of John Stevens. My father-in-law's founding immigrant ancestor, John Stevens came to the United States, supposedly, from County Mayo in northern Ireland. That, at least, was what he claimed on his naturalization paperwork.

Can I find any other way to verify that claim? Of course not. That would be too easy. I have pursued that question for years, to no avail. But I'm willing to explore the question once again.

This time, I'll be taking a different approach. Instead of focusing on the question itself—where did John Stevens come from?—I'll broaden my search. This month, we'll explore the history of that particular surname, as well as the history of the Stevens surname in John's native Ireland. We'll also delve into what can be discovered about emigration from County Mayo—John's ship came in to port at New Orleans, not the customary routes we've noticed from other Irish immigrant family members.

While such exploration may not permit us to arrive at our destination of finding John Stevens' identity in records back in Ireland, we will at least develop a better understanding of this man by painting his life's picture with these admittedly more broad brush strokes. We'll start tomorrow by reviewing what we've already found on John Stevens, the immigrant who moved to tiny Lafayette, Indiana, in 1850.

Collecting Questions

 

Some may see genealogy as an effort to collect facts about their forebears, and in some ways, perhaps it is. But if that act of collecting remains limited to names and dates of key events—birth, marriage, death—we're not only missing some of the most important details about an ancestor's life, we're missing out on the excitement, wonder, and plain ol' fun of getting to know our family's stories.

In the case of my father in law's great-grandmother, Catherine Kelly Stevens, it turns out that all I can collect is questions. And there are plenty of them.

Perhaps that is a good thing. Otherwise, I'd have been satisfied with the tale of her tragic, shortened life—born somewhere in Ireland before a devastating famine, uprooted from her homeland and enduring a difficult passage across an ocean to America, then settling with her family in western Indiana only to marry, bear three sons, and die young, before any governmental record-keeping could catch up with her.

Even though there are minimal records which seem to indicate that her parents were James and Mary Kelly and her siblings Matthew, Rose, Thomas, Ann, and Bridget, finding documentation on their existence in and around Lafayette, Indiana, was not enough. The more I've thought about this research dilemma—I'm hoping to push back the family line just one more generation to their specific location in Ireland—the more I realize there are several aberrations from the "normal" Irish immigrant story.

It is those "aberrations" which may hold the key to actually attaining my research goal.

For one thing, why did the Kelly family end up in Indiana? Reading most material written about the waves of Irish immigration to North America, it is obvious that the major destinations, leading up to the early 1850s, were either eastern Canadian ports or the American ports of New York and Boston. Indiana is not exactly the kind of spot one thinks of when imagining the quintessential Irish immigrant.

In addition, the one thing immigrants came to America for was to obtain a better future for themselves and their families. That translates into decent jobs—or at least a plot of land suitable for farming. What type of work did the Kelly family hope to attain by coming to Indiana? There had to be a connection between the motivation to come here and the abilities these immigrants brought with them. Of this, I currently know nothing.

The one thing I do know about the Kelly family's condition upon arrival was their religion: they were Catholic. By virtue of their religion, their immigration choices may have been directed far differently than had they been, say, of a Protestant persuasion.

Similar to that might be a clue about their native tongue. While we assume the Irish, being part of the kingdom of Great Britain, spoke English, in the 1850s (not to mention before that decade), there were many Irish who did not speak English—or spoke very little of it at all. If there is any way to glean indications of their mother tongue, that might help in providing clues about why the Kelly family chose to settle in Indiana, rather than an eastern, coastal city where many of their fellow countrymen would have lived.

One of my main questions, though, is this: How did they get there? What route brought the Kelly family to Lafayette? The city—back in 1850 only a town of six thousand people—was founded only twenty five years before that point. How would anyone from Ireland even have known to travel to such a small, insignificant destination?

As it turns out, delving into the history of such small locales—especially if they eventually claimed our ancestors as their residents—helps broaden our understanding of why our ancestors might have made the immigration choices they made. Clues embedded in a city's history—or transportation's history, or occupational or religious history—help us get into the heads of our ancestors. Those clues may not make it entirely clear what choices our ancestors made, or even why they made such choices, but as we'll see this week, those details will lead us at least closer to some research possibilities.

Any step closer to our research goals is well worth the effort. Not to mention, each detail we glean about the "big picture" of life-as-they-lived-it will illuminate our ancestors' stories, gifting us with a greater appreciation for the challenges they faced within the framework of the times in which they lived—not assumptions simply lifted from our own era. As we finish out this month's research goal of finding more about Catherine Kelly's origin in Ireland, we'll examine what can be discovered about the bigger picture of Irish immigration specifically to Indiana. 

The Dark Side of History

The strange disappearance of any mention of the names of the Stockton family in northern Florida, following the 1900 census, did have me stumped. When I went to the DNA conference last weekend, I took that question with me. At a point when I had a chance to talk with conference speaker Kenyatta Berry, I asked her that question. Why would all those people, from three different Stockton families, simultaneously disappear?

Admittedly, in researching family lines, we can run across tragedies spanning entire families. Florida being hurricane country, it isn't hard to imagine a poverty-stricken family seeing their home blown to bits in the gale force winds of such devastation of nature. Or consider the various epidemics occurring throughout our history, sometimes wiping out significant percentages of a town within a matter of months.

While such things do happen, there is another aspect that interjects itself into the history of the south—a darker side to history. While the end of the institution of slavery may have seemed a bright spot, it was followed by the politically unsuccessful Reconstruction era—along with, in its wake, subsequent rioting—and after that, the era of Jim Crow laws. Taking a quick read through the overview of historic events of those time periods can give a clear idea that the south was not a place to be if one looked like a former slave. Economic discrimination in the communities of the south was the least of an African-American family's problems.

When I asked Kenyatta Berry her opinion on why three of the families affiliated with King Stockton might have seemingly disappeared by the early 1900s, she had a few suggestions. First, of course, was that the family might have moved to the north. Better economic opportunity could come with such a move. Another variation on that theme was that the families might have moved from the country to urban areas within the same state, where there might be better offers of work.

The other possibility she mentioned was not as logically sterile. Could there have been a lynching in the area, she asked. While the time period might not have lined up with the dates when I saw the family seemingly scatter, I still had to answer in the affirmative. Yes, at one point, there had been such a tragedy. Perhaps that event was the tip of an iceberg of a societal chill factor, the impetus for the family to leave the area.

Coming to a conclusion on that research problem isn't easy. It could just be a matter of not finding the family mentioned in the records—another possibility I had considered. After all, what if enumerators—taking a head count for the precise reason of providing numbers determining representation in Congress—decided to slight the count for ulterior reasons?

All such conclusions can only be fed by a proper understanding of the context of the history of the time. Of course, it would be nice to find King Stockton's family names in the subsequent census records, but not being able to do so might be just the problem we need. It forces us to have to slow down and be alert to signals the historic narrative is sending us. We can't really understand our ancestors without understanding the times in which they lived. I'm hoping this detour sends us some strong signals to help pick up the story of what became of King Stockton's family.

The Problem with Generic Terms

While reading about the several massacres reported in the King Stockton biography may be alarming to those of us previously unaware of that northern Florida territorial history, there is one problem with the recounting of that history: the usage of the general term, "Indians."

Reading through the various histories of pre-territorial Florida, there are mentions of several different indigenous people groups. Sometimes, their fortunes seemed to rise and fall with the ebb and flow of the various European powers claiming dominance in the area. At the time of the earliest European settlement in what was later to become northern Florida and southeastern Georgia, the predominant native population was known as the Timucua. Organized into clusters of villages, these people spoke a dialect unlike any other in the southeast region.

As had happened to native populations throughout the eastern seaboard of North America, introduction of diseases from European settlers rapidly decreased the Timucuan population. During the time of Spanish colonization of the area, their population shriveled to only about one thousand members of this people group. The Spanish sought to replenish local populations in the area by introducing other tribes, such as the Yamasee, into the areas vacated by the dwindling population of the Timucua.

When Spanish rule of Florida was transferred to the British, the last of those remaining Timucua moved with the Spanish to Cuba—or perhaps joined themselves to other Native tribes.

Of course, this recounting of the history of Native populations before the 1800s is simplified. Strife between different tribes, between specific tribes against settlers—whether Spanish or English—or strife incited by one European colonizer against a rival European government through bargains with various Native groups, peppered the history with ever-shifting alliances, thus influencing the decreasing numbers of Native populations by the 1800s.

With the incidents recounted in the King Stockton story, however, we talk about the Seminole wars. Not Timucuan, not Yamasee—who were these people?

A history of the area posted on the Suwannee County website posits:

Creek Indians moving from Alabama in the late 1700s as white settlers forced them off their ancestral property intermarried with runaway slaves and the few Timucua Indians that may have remained. Their descendants became the Seminole people.

Another theory was that the defeated Yamasee eventually joined with the Seminole—as possibly other tribes from more northern origins did, too. Whatever their true origin, the Seminole were fingered as the enemy for three separate sets of battles against settlers in what was to become Florida, ranging from 1816 until 1858. These Seminole were likely the perpetrators of the massacre accounts preserved in the King Stockton biography.

Of course, each side has its own viewpoint and explanation for the struggles that ensued with the arrival of European settlers. The lost lives mentioned in the Stockton accounts were indeed tragic losses as fallout from that clash of cultures. While ours may not be the history of one of those people groups, they, too, suffered losses. Those other losses, though not our story to pass down to our descendants, comprise the story that might be shared by survivors from the other side of the struggle. And at this removed point in history, there may be some of us whose heritage grants us stories from both sides of those same struggles.

The Equivalent of a Selfie

Spring has sprung on us suddenly, here in "sunny" California. We've been plunged from cloudy and—thankfully—rainy weather almost immediately into temperatures in the mid-eighties. Naturally, everyone has headed outdoors to take advantage of the welcome change. Those suddenly green open spaces are full of people walking, tanning, cycling—doing almost anything to soak up those desperately-missed rays of sunshine.

The other day, I drove past a corner with a patch of green upon which a young woman was sitting, face turned upward. I would have thought she was just luxuriating in the solar warmth, until I realized she was actually taking a selfie.

What is it about selfies? What compels people to constantly be taking—and posting—their own pictures?

That's what I was thinking, at first, when I glimpsed that social media tableau. And then I realized: this person was no different than any of us who have gone to a photography studio to pose for our portrait, or send our picture as our Christmas greeting card, or even include it in our business card. Think about all the years in which you have enclosed a picture—yours, solo, or flanked by family—with a letter. If we've done things like that over the years, it's really no different than the selfie-absorbed snapping their own digital likeness.

And no different than our tech-savvy ancestors who were the first to try out those snazzy carte de visite formats or their successor, the cabinet card. Surely, those folks sent out as many tokens of their forward-thinking remembrances as was budgetarily permissible. 

Yet, in finding a home for the abandoned family photographs I've been rescuing from the back bins of antique shops, I sometimes encounter people who wonder, "How did you get a copy of this photo?" Of course, that's what I wonder, myself, and often try to retrace the path the photograph might have taken that landed it in such a forsaken position.

What some people mean, though, when they ask that question is: how did this family's photo end up with a descendant of that family? Well...probably the same way our children's college graduation portraits ended up in the file cabinets of our former bosses, or their "save the date" engagement photos got tossed in a box when our next door neighbor packed up and moved to Florida.

Worse, while some of those pictures had names on them, some of them didn't, dooming generations of descendants to wonder: who was that gangly kid from Podunk U and how does he relate to me?

For my part, of course, I opt for the photos with at least a partial name and location, if not the full name, when I am searching for photo-rescue candidates. In the case of the photo collection I've stumbled across in a Jackson, California, antique store—all the possession of Thirza Browne Cole, though many, apparently, not her own relatives—they may be nothing more than the nineteenth century's equivalent of sharing one's selfie, a way to send a token in fond remembrance of the past, when the connection between two people was closer before Time and circumstances intervened. 

Genealogy: the "Unit Study" Approach to Life and Everything

Lately, it turns out that I am teaching beginning genealogy classes at various locations about twice weekly. After doing this for a few years, one thing has become clear to me: people come into these classes with one question in mind. Something happens during the class process, though, that turns them around, leaving with several concepts in mind. I've realized that genealogy can do that.

People often come into my classes thinking that finally, they'll learn how to prove the story that their mother's family really did have Native American roots. Or that Papa came from Tuscany. Or Alsace-Lorraine.

Once they learn the basic techniques for starting their own genealogical research, though, they realize how many other areas they need to learn, in order to fully comprehend just what it was like to be that person from Tuscany. Or that Chickamauga native. They gain an appreciation for the impact of those key historic events which may now be mere murky memories from high school history class. Now, for instance, the Civil War—or the Chinese Exclusion Act, or westward expansion—gets seen in a whole different light: events which had made a difference in their great-great grandparents' lives.

Of course, an experience like that can turn even the most reticent student of history (like me in my high school years) into an avid pursuer of the truth of the matter.

High school history classes, at least the ones I had to endure, were often taught in a linear format: first, this thing happened on this date, then it was followed by that event. Names blended into dates into wars or elections or inventions or newspaper headlines in one big blur of so what?! For me, it became a matter of how well I could memorize facts—and remember them long enough to spill them out on paper at exam time.

Fast forward another generation, and I became part of the homeschooling movement in our country. Homeschoolers have a name for a particular approach that was much different than my own high school experience. They called it "unit studies." That meant, for any topic they studied, students learned everything there was to know about that one subject.

If they wished to learn about, say, sugar, they would examine it as a commodity, but they would learn about its chemical composition, its impact on diet and health, its origins, and its role in history and even economics. While learning about a simple topic like sugar, students would end up exploring a world of other topics as well—a learning odyssey similar to that traced in the Sidney Mintz book, Sweetness and Power, taking in everything from the history of sugar's position as treat for kings to its place as a "slave crop" to its more commonplace modern role as the additive on more foods on our table than we care to admit.

It's surprising what one can learn from taking an in-depth look at one single topic, like sugar.

Or genealogy.

Genealogy becomes the catalyst to learn the universe of everything there is to know about the 1920s, just so you can understand what drove grandpa to do what he did. Or discover the angst of the 1930s. Or 1890s.

I have class members coming away from sessions, amazed at how much they have learned about the Civil War, for instance, just because they discovered a family member fought for the Union. Or shocked to learn what their immigrant ancestors endured, just in the process of boarding a ship—or worse, arriving on American shores. There is a universe of learning out there, waiting to be discovered, just for having taken that first step of wanting to discover one's family history.

Genealogy has become the gateway to learning history. In a personal way—and yet, a universal way. And that has made all the difference for people.

And yet, we are surprised to make that discovery.

Deciphering the Details

It's inevitable, when researching information on family history from past centuries, that we'll encounter terms and descriptions that seem so foreign that they are of no help at all in allowing us to better understand the world in which our ancestors lived. Face it, the world back in 1880 or even 1908 was a vastly different place than the one in which we now live. Activities of daily life became a collection of terms and tasks far different than ones we use today. Sometimes, the difference is so huge, we end up walking away without having the slightest idea about things that, to our ancestors, were so commonplace.

In researching my family's history, that's when I start asking questions.

Reading the reports on the untimely death of John Blain in Paola, Kansas, in 1908 had that same effect on me. Take, for instance, the court description of the main train track curving "round that cobhouse to the eastward." Cobhouse? I had to look that one up. (Apparently, the term either refers to a "flimsy unstable structure" or a small building "constructed of mud, clay, and straw."

Granted, I could have inferred a similar meaning from the context of the article, but I just wanted to know specifically what the term might have meant at the time it was used.

But it was another phrase that really pushed me to look it up instead of settling for an educated guess. Remember the part which mentioned that John Blain, in turning to see who was calling to him, was then "struck by the pilot beam of the engine."

What's a pilot beam?

I realize there are those who are so taken with the history of railroads that their enthusiasm for the subject has led them to either spend thousands of dollars on collectibles or spend countless hours consuming every last detail about the topic. I am not one of those people, so please forgive my ignorance. I had to go look up what a pilot beam might have been.

Going in search of this information was not an easy process, given my complete lack of understanding about locomotives. The handy-dandy drawing of the "Commonwealth Locomotive Pilot Beam with Flexible Buffing Gear" in the 1922 Locomotive Cyclopedia of American Practice, for instance, told me nothing. There was no scale to the drawing, nor any diagram with a red arrow and the directions, "insert pilot beam here."

I need that kind of guidance when attempting to understand my ancestors' world.

Nor did the entry I was directed to in the 1906 Locomotive Dictionary, despite its being billed as "An Illustrated Vocabulary of Terms which Designate American Railroad Locomotives." When I googled the term "pilot beam," I was directed to the page fourteen definition for "bumper beam." As a subheading to that term, the dictionary described pilot beams as "the term applied to the same part [bumper beam] when the locomotive is fitted with a pilot."

Thanks.

Eventually, on page fifty nine, I found an explanation which made a bit more sense—but only after wading through more verbiage. Here's how the book defined "pilot":

An inclined pointed structure of wood or iron bars fastened to the front bumper of a locomotive to remove obstructions from the track.

Oh. And then the dictionary provided the part that translated to our era:

Formerly called cow catcher.

Formerly called cow catcher? I've never heard of a pilot on a locomotive, but at least I've heard of a cow catcher. So the pilot beam must be something which affixed to the cow catcher. Great. So now I can disabuse myself of any visuals of the man being gored to death by a literal beam somehow protruding from the front of a locomotive like a gladiator's spear.

Taking the time to ascertain the exactness of terms we're not currently familiar with can help paint a clearer picture of the specific episodes in our ancestors' lives. While a 1908 term like pilot beam might not be that outdated, the terms of centuries past sometimes yield us curves which we're not sure how to field. Learning how to talk the lingo of our ancestors' contemporaries can sometimes open our eyes to the impact of those everyday realities in the lives of the people we are researching.

Above: Undated photograph of the Missouri Pacific Railway locomotive engine number 152; image number RG005_77_27_0714 courtesy the Missouri State Archives via Wikipedia; in the public domain—with a mighty fine specimen of a pilot included, if I say so myself.





 

I R L (2)

Sometimes, the screeching warnings coming out of real life penetrate the genea-bubble surrounding even the most obtuse of us family history researchers. Just as it had, less than ten days ago, the severe weather warnings have once again shaken me out of my research reverie.

No sooner had Harvey blown out of Houston, than we began picking up the faintest warnings of another storm to come. This time, though, it wasn't Texas which was the target, but Florida.

I've already heard from a sister-in-law who decided to reroute her return trip home to Florida from her vacation; instead, she's headed for a daughter's home in inland Texas. A cousin, also living in the path of Irma but traveling up north at the moment, is also re-evaluating her travel plans. We've heard from others with family and friends in Florida, most of whom are trying their best to leave the state before Irma's arrival. So far, everyone we've heard from has accomplished that goal, but still, the tone is tense, as people are leaving everything behind.

If you've been following A Family Tapestry for any time, you likely realize Florida is one of those states where I have a longstanding ancestral heritage. Though I don't live there—I hadn't even set foot in the state for my first time until just last winter—my roots there grow deep. I have genealogical connections—as well as personal connections—with Tampa, central Florida and the panhandle. I've always wanted to go back and visit those family homes on a research trip.

Hurricanes in Florida are not a rare occurrence, as I'm sure you realize if you've kept an ear attuned to news over the years. In fact, during one year—I think it was Hurricane Andrew that year—one family member's home was completely destroyed, a catastrophic event, to say the least.

Multiply that experience over and over again, by the magnitude of the many years of hurricane history times the number of people living through the trauma, and perhaps that bird's-eye snapshot will get you thinking the very same thing I'm wondering: if Florida is a locale doomed to such repeated devastation, how on earth have people there managed to keep safe all the documentation of their history? Winds, rains, storms—and the ensuing mold and mildew—become bitter taskmasters for the archivists doomed to mop up the aftermath.

Yes, people will somehow get on with their lives—rebuild, placing the new over the rubble of the old—but what about those tokens of where we've been? I've often wondered why I can't find any photographs of my great-grandfather's family, or any other memorabilia of their existence in Florida. Perhaps it's because those are the details which succumb to the fury of those regularly-passing storms.

One wonders what becomes of a people whose yearly existence includes such threats of devastation. It becomes a very different way of life to have to anticipate fleeing in the path of destruction at the approach of the annual "hurricane season."

While I certainly sympathize with those who are facing the facts of Hurricane Irma right now—running the risk of losing their homes if they leave, or their life or safety if they stay—I had never thought about this sort of circumstance as a way of life. Turmoil such as this may enter anyone's life once or twice, perhaps, but having to endure it on a yearly basis seems to introduce a very different dynamic with that type of stress. A thought like that can lead a genealogical researcher to see in a very different light their ancestors who've regularly survived such conditions.

As for me, I am not made of such mettle. I'd take the risk of an occasional earthquake over the wake of such annual destruction, any day.

But for those whose life paths have led them to settle in this weather-worn region, my thoughts and prayers are with you, for personal safety and protection of your family over anything else.   

I R L

Sometimes, we get so caught up in our genealogical research that we lose track of what is happening in real life for those connected to our research.

I was pressing onward with finding a DNA match for one particular line in my father-in-law's tree—good intentions about researching those less-completed paternal lines in mind—when I realized my online connection didn't seem to be responding to my repeated clicks. Though I've had my husband test at three different DNA companies, in this case, I was working on a match to my husband's DNA test at Family Tree DNA. You know, the genetic genealogy company located in Houston...

...oh. Yeah. Harvey.

Sometimes, this twenty-four-seven access we've become accustomed to in the genealogy world spoils us. We forget about what is happening in the outside world when the documents of centuries past are at our virtual beck and call. Sometimes, however, clicks don't retrieve the expected responses.

On the company's Facebook page, Family Tree DNA mentioned two days ago that while the building they are housed in is safe from flood damage, they have closed their office until it becomes safe for their employees to commute to work.

Of course, there are many other questions in customers' minds, as well. According to FTDNA, the DNA samples they are storing for customers remain safe. While their summer sale is still in progress through tonight, there will likely be a delay in shipments—as well as with processing of returned kits. Some employees are working from home, but because of the lesser number of available employees, the best way to contact FTDNA is online, not by phone, for obvious reasons.

At the time of that Tuesday morning Facebook announcement, Family Tree DNA had anticipated being able to open their office again "later this week." Whenever they reach the point where it is safe to do so, they have our well-wishes for a safe return in the aftermath of such incredible destruction.


Disclaimer: While this post does include a link to a commercial entity, it does not include any affiliate links. 

A Different Sliver of Life

While some families are sending their children off to the first day of school this week, others may be playing hooky. In fact, every time I heard someone tell me their family was taking a vacation this week, my mind flew to one particular reason to take a trip at this late date in the summer: to find the most advantageous spot to view today's solar eclipse.

Solar eclipse mania has captured the attention of a good number of people in this country, where the time of occurrence coupled with the abundance of promising viewing situations makes it an accessible activity for many. A friend of mine drove northward earlier this month with plans to rendezvous with other traveling friends somewhere on the path of the eclipse in Oregon. Likewise, my husband, squeezing a flight northward into his busy schedule, will blend taking in the solar spectacle with some much-needed social time with a good college buddy.

One thing that hasn't been lost on me, in the midst of this astronomical activity, is the predictable regularity of such signs in the heavens. Tracking the records of people who tracked the eclipses has given us an idea of how early in history such things were noticed—and calculated. In fact, there's even a name for someone who pursues such a study: archaeoastronomer.

Records from over five thousand years ago in Ireland helped one archaeoastronomer determine the precise date for an eclipse corresponding to the arrangement of one specific megalithic monument in County Meath, Ireland. Similar records from China, ancient Babylon and Greece align closely with the dates of other eclipses. Solar eclipses in particular have long captured the attention of our fellow human beings.

Once people have been able to determine the reason for these alarming celestial occurrences, it wasn't long until they could predict such events in their future. Of course, with technology and equipment at our disposal today, that dating system has been finely honed.

While you and I may not have the wherewithal to determine even who our ancestors were who viewed the eclipses of past millenia, we have at our access lists of dates for when these solar events occurred. A quick consultation at lists such as this five millennia catalog, provided by Wikipedia, can also allow us to learn when the more accessible of our ancestors might have looked upwards in wonder at the drama unfolding across the face of the sun.

Of course, for those who have letters or, better yet, diaries of their relatives from past generations, they may be privileged to learn when such events occurred in the lives of their family—and what those past family members might have thought about the eclipses of their day. For those of us who don't have such treasures, we can still learn the dates when our ancestors may have viewed various solar wonders—total, annular, or partial—just by consulting such lists as this one for eclipses of the 1800s.

When we think of assembling the family history of our ancestors, there is so much more to include than those stark realities of names, dates and locations of birth, marriage or death. The small but significant events that occur in our lifetimes have also, in one form or another, occurred in the lives of our forebears. When we think about these key events in life and how they might have intersected with the life stories of our great-grandparents and those who lived before them, it somehow brings their stories to life so much more crisply than the plain recitation of dates and places ever could.

And with the realization of these commonalities, we are gifted with a stronger sense of connection with the very people whose genes gifted us with the characteristics and tendencies that make us who we really are.

Above: "The Long Coronal Streamers of 22d January 1898 (from a photograph in India by Mrs. Maunder)" from page 230 of the 1900 book by Mabel Loomis Todd, Total Eclipses of the Sun; courtesy Google Books via Wikipedia; in the public domain.
      

Already Back to "Back to School"

Some of the school districts in my city begin school tomorrow. Some have already been in session for a week. Others won't start for a while longer. It's interesting to search for the reasons for the switch—and, by extension, the reason for much of what's happened in public education in the past centuries since we've become a country instead of a British colony.

Since it's my habit to wonder about the history in which my ancestors' lives were steeped, of course I'd be curious as to when school started for my great-grandparents. Or if my third great-grandparents even went to school—and if so, what it was like back then.

While some of us who grew up in the northeastern part of the United States may remember the official start of school never came before Labor Day, lately things have been different. For a long time. For the vast majority of parents in this country now, school starts long before Labor Day.

Interestingly, the start of school hasn't always been that engraved-in-stone post-Labor Day date. It's been an education of its own to peruse some writings on the evolution of when we start the school year and why.

Apparently, the line-drawn-in-the-sand Labor Day start hasn't always been so. The debate over start date, even now, is a "complicated, insidious struggle" between educators, commercial interests, governmental dictates, and financial analysts. And that line about starting school in September so the kids could help out on the farm? Myth, according to one article.

So, what was the norm when your ancestors started school? It largely depended on the era in which those ancestors were of school age, and where they grew up. City schools were vastly different than country schools in many requirements, among them number of days students attended school.

While I'll leave the bickering over start dates to others, the disagreement opens up the possibility for discovering more about our own ancestors' lives—and for making those discoveries relevant to our own families, especially the young ones still in our charge.

In fact, the many activities of daily life experienced by specific ancestors may reveal much about their whereabouts and their origins—clues we would miss if not willing to ask ourselves such questions. What, indeed, did our relatives of past centuries do about the myriad activities that become invisible to us because we take them for granted? Answers to such questions may awaken us to the texture of the fabric of life lived by the very people we're trying to research.

At the very least, it makes me wonder what, exactly, was the impetus for making the Wednesday after Labor Day my hometown school district's start date for my entire public school experience. Since I grew up near the beach, could it have been the vested interests of shopkeepers at the beach, wanting to keep their part-time help until the end of the season—or the whole tourism industry in general, wishing to support a healthy profit margin for the season? Could it have been owing to union organizers, intent on maintaining respect for the Labor Day designation?

There could have been many reasons. And different reasons, depending on which location became home for your ancestors.

Take this as an invitation to peruse the complex history of public education in the places where your ancestors once called home. Back in the day for your ancestors, school may not have started after Labor Day, either.

Branching Out From History

Researching one's family history can reawaken that sense of wonder inspired by hearing ancestors' stories. I don't know about you, but I can be taken up by the stories unfolding as I research my family's history.

Sometimes, that rapt attention can take me far afield of the strict confines of genealogy. Knowing some streets have been named after particular ancestors in my tree, I find myself wondering how it came to be that a certain street received its name. I know others have fallen in love with house histories, learning more about the succession of people who once lived in the home owned by an ancestor.

This past weekend, I spent some time at a place inspired by someone obsessed with learning the history of one particular accoutrement of a bygone century's daily life. As much as our generation—indeed, the entire past century—has been taken up with automobiles, prior centuries' transportation needs were answered, not by horsepower of a machine, but by the power of horses.

The place I visited was a museum dedicated to exhibiting and explaining the history of the various contraptions devised by man to be pulled by history's workhorses. From humble wagons to the dress chariots of royalty, this particular museum examined the many variations that form of transportation has taken over the centuries.

The location is The Grand Oaks Resort and Museum in Lady Lake, Florida. Within the peaceful spread of the property is the Carriage Museum, featuring the collection of European and American carriages of all types, assembled by Gloria Austin, author and founder of the Equine Heritage Institute.

Though the facility itself is rather plain, the array of carriages housed in the collection is impressive. Each display includes a descriptive plaque to inform visitors on the self-guided tour of the collection. Included, where possible, is the provenance of each carriage—although, admittedly, there are some notable parts of the collection for which no explanation can be provided as to how the piece ended up where Ms. Austin and her advisors discovered it before its acquisition, such as the gala coupe of Franz Josef, former head of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Walking through the exhibit, my mind wandered to thoughts of just how enthusiasm for specific topics can branch out into fervent pursuit of related fields. Just as the love of equestrian sports surely inspired the questions that led to such an impressive collection of carriages, how could genealogy inspire related pursuits of collectibles? Each family may have specific interests which could evolve into a passion for an expanded collection.

It's not quite as if we collect people. Of course not. But some families may have members who love music or have old instruments from significant sources. Or that may love needlework or quilting and have a collection that can tell a more detailed story about the family members who once loved them or created them. I often look at the bookshelves in my living room and bedrooms, stacked double, and wonder what someone might glean about the inhabitants in our home, or what they might surmise we are like, based on the titles we own.

Each of the members of our family tree had artifacts that, themselves, could tell tales about the people who owned them. Granted, many of those tales were subsequently lost by too-enthusiastic de-cluttering descendants. But those who have been fortunate to inherit antiques from bygone generations in their family have sometimes also obtained the stories behind those prized pieces.

No matter what collectibles we might find ourselves branching into from the original pursuit of our family tree, those items, themselves, can reveal more about the very people we are trying to research. It is as if our ancestors left the fingerprints of their lives on the items that passed through their hands—and eventually to us. Learning to capture those otherwise invisible records—and learn how to properly interpret them—is an acquired skill that can augment our genealogical pursuits.

Getting Back to the Source

Sometimes, it is easy to get so entangled in the little details of the search that we lose sight of the bigger picture.

In trying to figure out the identity and details on the main people featured in a photo album I found at an antique store, it was easy to stick with what resources we had at hand. After all, not only did our Penrose Hawkes migrate to New York in his teen years, but at least two of his uncles had done likewise in the previous generation. We had the luxury of many resources here in the States to inform us about Penrose, his life's work and personal concerns. Of course we were going to gobble up all the resources we could find in that setting.

But in trying to determine just who Alice was—the "Self" of the couple who signed their names on that 1936 Christmas album as "Harry and Alice"—we could search those United States resources forever and not come up with the answer we needed. Why? This Alice was likely still living back in Ireland.

How could we have forgotten that? Tunnel vision. It's easy to get so focused on one route of discovery that we fail to stand back and get the bigger picture. Of course Penrose's family would still have some people who remained back in Ireland.

For those who have an international subscription to services such as Ancestry.com, or go direct to the source by subscribing to FindMyPast.ie, the next step would be quite easy: just look up the Hawkes family in County Cork for the 1901 and 1911 census enumerations. After all, Penrose didn't leave home until he was about sixteen, so both those documents would help us determine the family constellation.

Of course, we are still lacking some information on the full family. We know Penrose was named after his father, and that his full name—same as his dad's—was actually John Pim Penrose Hawkes. But we know very little about the rest of the family, other than that, according to the 1940 U.S. Census, Penrose was born in Ireland around 1900.

Almost immediately, using my international Ancestry.com account, I located Penrose's family in the 1901 census. That discovery informs us that Penrose's mother was named Sara. And it also provides us with the details about his only sibling. You will be relieved to learn that that sibling was indeed a sister—she was an older sister by about one year—and that her name was...ta da...Alice.

It wasn't simply Alice Hawkes, though. What would you expect from a family who named their son John Pim Penrose Hawkes? The two year old daughter is listed in the 1901 census as Alice Ruby—now giving us an early hint as to where Alice's daughter Ruby's name may have come from.

Just to double check, I looked up the family in the next census. There in Grange in County Cork was the same family. Well, almost. The names are mostly the same, except the now-twelve year old daughter is called Alice Bridget. I suspect that is simply a matter of Alice receiving three given names, just as her brother had done. For now, we'll use the name as Alice Ruby Bridget—and adjust accordingly, as we find other documentation.

So, without any fanfare, there in two simple—albeit international for us—documents, we resolve the issue of just who "Self" might have been. After all, if "Self's" mother, "Grannie," is the woman known as Mrs. Penrose Hawkes of the 1930s kennel club shows, it stands to reason that Self and Penrose are siblings. And here is the listing for Penrose's sister's name. Perfect.

That discovery, however, leads us to Alice's maiden name—not her married name. But once we focus on records in the Hawkes' homeland, it will likely once again be an easy matter to discover who she married, and whether she had two daughters named Ruby and Iris. We'll take a look at what we can find on that account, tomorrow.

Above: Excerpt of image of John Pim Penrose Hawkes' household entry for the 1901 census, courtesy National Archives of Ireland.

Tracing Places No Longer on the Map

It's one thing to research your forebears when they come from a recognizable location like France. Or Spain. You know, those places you can find on a map.

When it comes to finding the records to verify your family's origin in a country no longer in existence, that search presents a new question: how do you find the repository for records from such a place?

For most of the census enumerations conducted since my great grandparents arrived in the United States before 1890, the entry made on their behalf was usually "Germany." And for the decades in which that was noted, it would be correct. At that time—whether it was 1900, 1910, or 1930, the last census conducted before they died—the region Anton and Marianna Laskowski once called home had changed hands from one set of rulers to another.

If you had paid attention to reports of their origin in the earlier census records, you might have thought Anton and Marianna immigrated from Germany. It wasn't until that slip up in the reporting ritual for the 1920 census that I discovered not the country but the region they once considered their home.

That place was enumerated as Posen.

In trying, now, to go back and locate records of their family's births, marriages and deaths, the key is to find the repository for a political jurisdiction which has long since ceased to exist.

In retracing those steps, the first thing I wanted to do was familiarize myself with not only the history of that region, but the current events of the time frame in which the Laskowski family—and their relatives, the Gramlewiczes—chose to leave their homeland.

As I've mentioned before, Posen was how the Germans referred to a city the Polish called Poznań. Learning about Poznań brought up many fascinating details. For instance, it is one of the oldest of Poland's cities, dating back to the tenth century. It is also home to Poland's first cathedral. Political struggles over the centuries meant that the city changed hands often. It also meant the area was often war-torn. By the time my ancestors were ready to flee the area, the city—by then under Prussian rule—had begun building a series of new fortifications in response to all the turmoil.

Knowing that about the city of Poznań was informative, but it missed one crucial point: that name was not just used to designate the city by that name, but also the region surrounding it. Similar to my own circumstances—in which, when I say I'm from New York, I could be indicating either the city or the state—when my great grandparents told that census enumerator in 1920 they were from Posen, they meant the region, not specifically the city.

That region of Poznań had a history of its own, as well. Established in 1815 following the Napoleonic Wars, it was to be a semi-autonomous part of the Kingdom of Prussia. Designated the Grand Duchy of Posen, it turned out not to be, in practice, the theoretical haven of rights for its Polish residents as had been promised with the Congress of Vienna.

With changes in Prussian governmental dictates, Poles saw increasingly difficult times, which eventually led to revolution in 1848. The main result of the fighting was that Posen lost some autonomy, though it continued, as part of the Prussian domain, to be referred to as the Province of Posen, up through the year 1918.

Of course, with the conclusion of the Great War—not to mention, the war that followed the War to End all Wars—Prussia as a political entity ceased to be. By that point, my direct line ancestors were thankfully long gone from the region of Poznań. But because they once called that region home—and the place where they married and raised their children—I wanted to retrace the steps of their lives and see what documentation could be found to verify their stay in Poznań.

But where do you look for records from a country no longer in existence?

As it turned out, at least in this case, an intrepid cadre of genealogical volunteers have found a way to help people like me find those records I've been desiring to see. In a website primarily set in the Polish language—but fairly easily negotiated, thanks to translation services—I've found (and can't wait to share) the digital home for at least the marriage records of what was once the Prussian Province of Posen.     

Above: Charge of Poznań Cavalry during November Uprising; 1886 oil on canvas by Polish historical painter Juliusz Fortunat Kossak; courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.

Uncle Dave and Aunt Nancy

Why is it that some of the most horrific stories can start out so innocuously? When things are "going well," there is apparently no guarantee that they will stay the course. That's the case with the story I alluded to yesterday: a horrible event befalling a family well respected in the community.

Unlike the novelist, a family history researcher won't likely begin the tale with the gut-wrenching opener one would expect in a thriller, of course. Looking at the tale of the Gordon family from a genealogical vantage point broadens the perspective and amplifies the contrast, yet allows us to explore the elements which contributed to the cascade of events.

The story I mentioned yesterday was one I stumbled upon as I worked through my goal of documenting each of the descendants of John and Mary Duke Gordon. I've touched on the various research challenges in tracing the history of the immigrant, John Gordon, who was born in 1739—but where, as various reports insist it was Scotland while others said Germany.

Meeting and marrying Mary Helen Duke in Maryland in 1760, John and his bride eventually settled in Greene County, Pennsylvania. Among their many children was son William B. Gordon, who along with his first wife Mary Carroll became my mother in law's direct ancestors through their eldest son James—and with his second wife, Mary Cain, became another of her direct ancestors through their eldest son, William H. Gordon.

Though John and Mary Gordon ended their westward journey with their passing in Greene County, their son William B. Gordon was smitten with that same wanderlust about a decade after his father's death. All but one of William B. Gordon's children chose to move to Ohio with him when he left Pennsylvania. That one child was their daughter Nancy.

Nancy Gordon, born and raised in Greene County, was already married by the time her father and the rest of her siblings decided to make the move to Ohio. By then, she had been married to David Spragg for ten years, and had given birth to three children, with a fourth one due any minute, at the point at which the rest of the extended Gordon family left Greene County.

While it may have been hard for Nancy to bid goodbye to so many of her family members—after all, in 1836, travel was difficult and the likelihood of future visits quite dim—she and her husband were already well established in the community they called home. An 1888 entry in the Samuel P. Bates History of Greene County Pennsylvania indicated their five children eventually married well and enjoyed successful lives and vibrant families, close to the place they always had called home.

Nancy's husband David Spragg, though not well educated, was noted to have been "engaged in land speculations and farming" from an early age. He must have been quite successful, as his biographical entry in the Bates volume painted him as having "good social qualities" and being known as "a great philanthropist."

Of course, such community "histories" often served as brag pieces for those whose biographical entries were inserted into the publication. And yet, the couple apparently came by those flattering terms quite honestly. Considered "a blessing to the community," this memorial entry noted,

His wife was of a kind disposition, and their home was one of the most attractive in the neighborhood. He and his wife lived a long and happy life together, and were known to every one in that neighborhood as "Uncle Dave" and "Aunt Nancy Spragg."

The Spragg name was well known in Greene County, as was the Gordon name—well, until their removal to Perry County, Ohio, in 1836—and that good name bestowed favor upon the next generation, just as it had for those aunts and uncles and grandparents before the marriage of David Spragg and Nancy Gordon.

In that inexplicable twist of fate, however, things can turn out so differently for those descending from this good name, a generation or two beyond the present setting. While looking closely at the children of David and Nancy reveals nothing of a hint of trouble to come, it helps allow the story to unfold, to find a place on a timeline, and familiarize us with the players—and what might have set the stage for changes and choices. We'll meet that next generation tomorrow.

Above: Illustration of a man named David Spragg—although not included in the same section as featured his biographical sketch—appeared on page 145 in the 1888 History of Greene County, Pennsylvania by Samuel P. Bates
 

Putting the Search in Context

One thing which seemed masked, in the search for Marshall Jackson in his home in Dakota Territory, was the context in which he arrived, lived his life, and eventually exited. Perhaps there is this sense of continuity assumed in any genealogical search: that while our ancestor obviously arrived at some point, the place at which he arrived had always been there—at least in some form.

Sometimes, you have to put effort into the search to step back and discover the big picture. What I missed in this week's search was the fact that Marshall Jackson had arrived in Dakota Territory in the early years of formation of the places in which he lived. Not only that, but he arrived in the early years of his own life, as well.

Judging from census records, it appears to have been a young, single man of barely eighteen years who arrived in Pembina County from his native Ontario, Canada. Pulling our clues from the 1900 census, when he declared his age to be thirty seven, he gave his birth to be in the month of July, 1862. While his arrival out west in 1881 might have given the impression that he was a seasoned traveler, the fact was that he actually had barely grown up and left home.

In that same census, he indicated not only that he had arrived from Canada in 1881, but that he had become a naturalized United States citizen.

Sure enough, turning to the database at the North Dakota State University Archives, looking up his name in their naturalization records index yielded this result:

Marshall Jackson had filed his first papers in Pembina County on November 1, 1881. The follow-through occurred in the same county almost to the day, six years later.

Now, let's put this in perspective. In 1881, North Dakota was not yet a state—that didn't happen until the end of 1889. The county in which he filed his papers—Pembina County—was established in the northeast region of the Dakota Territory in early 1867, but didn't assume its current holdings until much later. Its shape morphed through a series of transitions that took it down in size from 1871, when it stretched from the Canadian border to nearly current-day South Dakota, to 1873, when the process began to carve eleven new counties from Pembina's borders.

That process had barely been completed when Marshall Jackson arrived in the region. To say where he actually settled might have been near impossible, without following the border changes through several iterations of map editing, if it hadn't been for two other documents.

One of those documents was the territorial census conducted in 1885. Transcribed and posted for free access on the North Dakota State University Archives, it shows us a young Jackson family—in addition to Marshall, his newly-wed young wife Hester and two year old son, listed as Bernard, at the bottom of this page—living in Cavalier, one of the counties carved out from the formerly immense Pembina County.

The other document which guides us to Marshall's whereabouts had a later date of origination: February 13, 1891. By the time that record was issued, Marshall was not quite yet twenty nine years of age, but he had just gotten himself named as a patentee on a land grant in Pembina County in the new state of North Dakota. In some ways, he and his family could be considered pioneers in that county's history.

Of course, at the time of the 1900 census, we can see the Jackson residence was located in the town known as Neche—said to be a Chippewa word meaning friend—and Marshall and Hester were by then the proud parents of two sons and two daughters. By the time the Jackson family left the state—best guess so far is 1904—Marshall had become well established in the county, thanks to his active duty as Pembina's constable.

By juxtaposing Marshall Jackson's personal timeline alongside the historical events of both the territory and the county, it reveals just how early in the history of the new state of North Dakota the family had actually settled there.

Above: Plat map of the township of Neche, North Dakota, from 1928—long after the Jackson family had left town; courtesy United States Library of Congress; in the public domain.
 

Flying Into the Future, Looking Back to the Past

When I was a kid, Pan Am (remember them?) published a world tour book listing every international destination served by the airlines. I know, because I found it in the library.

I remember summer afternoons, when it was too hot and muggy in New York to do much of anything else, taking my checked-out copy of the Pan Am tour guide and sitting in the shade on our front step, studying every page. I couldn't have been more than eleven or twelve.

As I read the travel advice about visiting Caribbean islands or countries in central Africa, from the distance behind me would come the whine of a passing jetliner on its approach to JFK International Airport. The sound would gradually get louder, then pass overhead, then fade into the distance as the jet prepared for landing. By the time one flight could barely be heard anymore, another one would replace it.

That sound became the inspirational accompaniment to my childish goal of visiting every country in the world. And why not? I had everything I needed to know, right at my fingertips in this tour guide. Easy.

Of course, several flights home from college a few years later cured me of any latent wanderlust. Six hours on a nonstop flight from SFO to JFK was about all I could handle in one sitting. Though I've since seen someone else has taken up that very goal and succeeded, I've become quite the home body and am happy to let others pick up that mantle. Now, I nurse along much more demure goals, like posting on a blog every day.

It seems, however, that that latent travel urge may have been genetic, for by the time you are reading this, my daughter—who is still blogging her saga of two semesters in Ireland—has blitzed through Korea and headed to Japan. All that, incidentally, after helping me present on Irish research at our local genealogical society meeting on Thursday night. When you're young, things move along at lightning speed. So fast, in fact, that it is already tomorrow where she is staying tonight.

Of course, I can't help thinking about this like a genealogist. Having heard, recently, that while DNA testing has incrementally been spreading through places like Europe, those with Asian heritage lack as ample a referent sample base for comparisons, I had to resist the urge to cram DNA test packets into my daughter's luggage. She was, after all, going to Korea and Japan—two places of origin for many current residents of the United States. Surely, some of them would be curious about their matches in their ancestral homeland.

What I realized, though, is that if, like me, my daughter manifests the same propensities, could that not mean I can extrapolate something about my ancestors' personalities, likes and dislikes, and tendencies as well? If my daughter gets the "travel gene" from me (or the "pay attention to me" gene from my husband), from where did our generation get those things?

If what we are like now will someday be projected into the future, courtesy of our children's children, in a very general way, we can gain a sense of what that future will be like for our family, in terms of the propensities we've passed along to our children.

Likewise, perhaps that gives us a more empathetic connection to those who people our own roots, as well.

 

Above: "Dresden by Moonlight," 1839 oil on canvas by "the father of Norwegian landscape painting," Johann Christian Claussen Dahl; courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.

Genealogy is History Made Personal

If you are one of those people who considers yourself a history buff, I can't possibly say anything about this topic that would be news to you. But for us unfortunate, former-haters-of-history—the ones forever scarred by the public school repackaging of the subject of history—perhaps you can relate.

History was not my strong suit in high school. I got by, of course, but hated every minute of it. As for my current feelings about the topic of history, I owe my reversal of opinion to genealogy. If it weren't for pursuing the life stories of my ancestors—and then trying to figure out how to park these people in the context of history's bigger picture—I would never have given history a second thought. Genealogy made history come alive for me.

When I began teaching, myself, it was quite tempting to handle the topic of history as if it were one big, rolling, panoramic soap opera. There was always something inserting itself into the status quo, wedging its disruptive self into the narrative. And the story line never unfolded on one solitary stage—history was more like a three ring circus, where the narrator constantly interrupted the plot to intone, "Meanwhile, back on the ranch..."

Despite this panoply of events in the unfolding timeline of worldwide activity, I was always sensitized to the risk of making history institutionalized. I dreaded leaving my students with the same sense of dislike of the subject as I had experienced in my own schooling. So it was with delight that I stumbled upon the realization that I could use my students' own family members to transform the subject into something more pertinent to them.

The simple exercise of learning what wars various students' great-grandparents served in was an eye opener. On one hand, this served as research training: knowing that my daughter's second great grandfather may have served in the Civil War—we're still unsure about those reports—has prompted a search through online records in an attempt to prove or disprove an obituary claim. On the other hand, it's served as inspiration to learn details: I've seen some of her peers, back during those middle school years, put together—with gusto—interesting displays of the battles in which their own ancestor actually fought.

In this past week, as I meandered through various loose ends in my own research—finding prompts in everything from the de Saussure connection in my collateral lines to the family connection to the namesake of a college stadium—it reminded me that genealogy has once again taken me on a whirlwind tour through history. If I can just remember to follow up on the questions prompted by the material I stumble upon, it inevitably guides me through some stage of history, some story about developing ideas and their impact on the course of history, leaving me with the sense of our very existence being nestled within the arms of history.

Whether any of us likes that study of history or not, it is an inescapable part of our very existence. The sooner we forsake our school-days distaste of the rote learning of dates and events, and break through that barrier to recognize the symbiotic relationship between our lives and the greater picture of the culture in which we move and breathe, the sooner we appreciate the role history takes on in shepherding us through the narrative of the ancestors we seek in our genealogical research.

Epilogue: The John Hogue Story

Though it took two months to recount, we've now covered the main points of the saga of John Syme Hogue of Charleston, West Virginia. It was certainly not the story I anticipated uncovering, once I arrived at this spot in the various branches of my own matrilineal line. Even though it did touch upon the who, what, where and when of the man's life history, it leaves somewhat to be desired concerning the why of the tale.

That "why" begins with the question of why even pursue the story in the first place. After all, if I stack my family tree next to his, the final tally is that he was fifth cousins with my great grandmother—hardly even someone she'd be aware of, much less know personally. The only link we'd share would be my seventh great grandmother, Margaret Watts, daughter of Richard Watts and wife of William Strother of King George County in colonial Virginia. And, if we recall how some members of our complete genealogical tree may not even be included in our genetic tree, that leads to the realization that John Hogue and I likely share not one shred of DNA in common.

So why pursue such a person's story? It certainly wasn't for the genealogy of it all. The litany of names and dates could have been stripped from the documentation quickly, allowing me to add each in its respective slot and move on to the next line as a matter of routine research.

Perhaps it was owing to the jolt of the unexpected or to that sixth sense of sniffing out a story. Still, why bother? After all, it wasn't my direct line.

I rather suspect it has to do with that penchant for discovering the stories of these individuals. Whoever these people are, with their labels neatly hanging on our family trees, despite those full names and complete dates, they are still as virtually unknown as if they had been pinned up on the display as nameless entities. Who cares if a person's name, five or seven generations back, was John or James or Joseph? We still won't know who he was—until we learn his life's story. That's when an ancestor becomes a real person to us.

Then, too, perhaps it was because of the unresolved drama. John Hogue's story became not only his own story, but the story of the lives of all the people his life touched—or, as the case turned out to be, snuffed out in an ill-conceived moment of desperation. His was a tangle of unresolved stories—everything from the ruined reputation of the family he left behind, to the family he tore apart in Canada, to even the young family he left behind by his death in the formative years of their lives. I want to know what became of them—each one of them and the ripple effect radiating out from their own experience. Perhaps, even now, that story continues to unfold.

The story of John Hogue reminds me of why I choose to see this research task not as genealogy but as family history. A matter of semantics for some, I suppose, but a very real differentiation in my own mind. Though these family members may, in their own cases, each have lived what might be considered, in the big picture, insignificant lives, I still want to unfold that story line to see how it played out, to follow the connections and realize the network of its impact. And, above all, to preserve what I've found and pass it on, so others may know about it, as well.

Above: "Farm with sleigh," 1900 oil on canvas by Russian painter Titus Dvornikov (1862-1922); courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.

Puzzling Over an Editorial Device

Delving into newspaper archives can be a great way to gain insight into the story behind the stories in a given ancestor's life—as long as you pick up the knack of reading between the lines. Still, there may be pitfalls in that approach.

That certainly turned out to be the case in pursuit of the psyche comprising one John Hogue, the man we now know as one of Canada's convicted murderers during those tumultuous years during World War I. Possibly displaced as prime headline in a news vortex that sucked national attention away to far distant current events across the Atlantic, the story of John Hogue's narrowly missing a fate of swinging on the gallows in Ontario dropped off the radar at about the time news reached home about the devastating casualties just sustained at Vimy Ridge.

Still, before that point, there was much to glean from the newspapers, and I've trawled through every report I could find. One, in particular, I want to revisit now as an example of how that hope of analyzing one's family history subject may sometimes backfire on a researcher.

This particular report on John Hogue appeared in the Brandon Daily Sun, a newspaper back in Manitoba, where Hogue had begun his long deportation journey in early 1917, and from which he had just completed a three month jail sentence. The article was datelined "Windsor, Ont., Feb. 13," shortly after Hogue had shot a Dominion immigration official in Ontario, in the course of attempting an escape.

The setting for the news story was the Windsor jail, where Hogue was being held for trial, scheduled for early March. Undoubtedly, thoughts uppermost on his mind would have been the very real possibility of a death sentence, and how that likelihood would spin out in his various relationships.

That, at least, was how I presumed it might have been. Reviewing the article now and giving it a second thought, I'm not sure it provides the same glimpse into his psyche as one might have presumed—a little fact checking persuaded me to think differently about the man's current state of mind, at least at that point.

Let's take a look at the article, and then I'll explain what I mean. From the page five article, under the title, "Alleged Murderer Disposed of Property":

James Steward, alias Wm. Anderson, alleged murderer of Marshall Jackson, of Winnipeg, who will stand trial in March, has disposed of all his earthly possessions. He has willed his diamond scarf pin to a sister, Margaret Ashworth of Evansville, Ohio; a small savings bank account deposited in a Des Moines, Iowa, bank, to another sister, of Travers City, Mich.; a valuable traveling clock to Inspector of Police Mortimer Wigle, of Windsor; a rain coat to Fred Steward, his night guard at Sandwich jail.

In addition to questions about implications for professional ethics in regard to the last two bequests, it turned out there were other doubtful details about the revelation of this criminal's first installment on last wishes.

On its face, this appears to be a wonderful opportunity to confirm this man's family circle—but if you thought that at first glance, think again. Remember, this is the man whom people were led to believe was named something other than his true identity; what makes us think he would correctly name either of the two sisters he had mentioned?

But let's, for a moment, give him the benefit of the doubt. Since we already know his true identity as John Hogue of Charleston, West Virginia, we can take a look at his family tree. As it turns out, he did have two sisters. Well, amend that: because his mother had been married twice, he had an older half-sister as well as a younger sister. However—and I know this won't come as a surprise to you now—neither of those sisters was named Margaret, let alone Ashworth. Plus, each of his sisters spent their entire lives in their hometown, back in West Virginia, not in Evansville, Ohio, or Travers City, Michigan.

Come to think of it, there isn't even any such place as Evansville, Ohio—not according to Google Maps or any Internet search. (Well, there was one result that came up on MapQuest, north of the point on eastbound Interstate 80, just before the split with Interstate 680, approaching Youngstown. But I couldn't replicate that information anywhere else.) Evansville, Indiana, yes (on the Ohio River, even); but not in Ohio. Perhaps our traveling yeggman had gotten his directions wrong.

But let's assume, for a moment, that this Margaret Ashworth was a real person. Was there anyone by such a name anywhere in Ohio close to that time period? As it turns out, there were no results on Ancestry.com for such a name in the 1920 census—but there was someone by that name in Youngstown in the 1930 census. Could that be some sort of clue?

Why did the article name one sister, but not the other? Why, indeed, did the paper include the name of a city that didn't even exist? Were these just editorial mistakes? Or can we even believe that the man had family scattered over all the midwestern United States—and bank accounts, too? Why would the newspaper's readership even care what an alleged murderer's possessions consisted of—or where they were bound after his demise?

Whether an editorial ploy or manipulative move on the part of Hogue, himself, this little display of histrionics tended to make me less sympathetic to his cause. It hatched all sorts of unanswerable questions, foremost among them considerations of the psychological aspects they might be revealing. Was this Hogue, attempting with pathos to sway the public (or at least the potential jurors), or was it simply reformist agitators seeking to disrupt the traditions of Canadian jurisprudence with a change in public sentiment?

Above all, hadn't anyone thought of the implication of such a statement before a verdict could even be reached in Hogue's court case? Why give away all one's "earthly possessions" before judgment has been pronounced? Wouldn't that have been considered an admission of guilt?

This type of agonizing over past newspaper reports may well be beyond the purview of what is meant by an "exhaustive search" for genealogical answers. To sort it all out, I'll likely resort to transcribing each of the many newspaper articles I've found, arrange them in date order, and set them aside to gel for a while before picking them back up for a final review. Sometimes, my brain needs a respite like that.

A story like this comes with baggage—a lot of context which simply can't be ignored. Although we'll need to revisit just one more stop along the way to John Hogue's commutation of execution to a life sentence, after that, it will be time to move along to the next episode in his story. You know this story couldn't just stop there.