Online Research Meets Boots-on-the-Ground Genealogy

Though I’ve currently hit what some may consider a sweet spot in online genealogical research—especially considering the mother lode of newspaper articles I’m finding on deafblind Samuel Bean in the Oakland Tribune—there’s a lot of the story that’s still missing.

But not lost.

There is a wealth of information yet to be found, and much of it is far from being added to digitized collections. The only way to access it is much the same way as it has always been: go there—wherever “there” might be—drill down and tap into it for ourselves.

Fortunately, in the case of Samuel Bean, his twin brother, older sister, and parents, that is fairly easily remedied for at least this researcher. My mother lode—for this Bean family—happens to be not far from where I live.

A trip to Redwood City, California, and surrounding areas last weekend was just enough to get me started. I thought I had a jump start, thanks to the online index to the Schellens Collection provided by the San Mateo County Genealogical Society. As it turned out, however, once I got to the library where the collection is housed, I found much more than I dreamed was available.

Some of the newspaper articles I found through the Schellens Collection index might seem to be insignificant sparkle for most researchers. Take this one instance, found in the Redwood City Democrat on January 14, 1892:

Bean and Mallott, Contractors and Builders. Store and office fittings a specialty. Jobbing promptly attended to.

Granted, it must have been an advertisement. Nothing earth-shaking. It told me a few things, though. First, because of the date of the publication, it showed me that this was an ad for Sam’s father, Leon and his business, rather than Leon’s father’s carpenter business. Leon’s father, also a Samuel, had passed away at a fairly young age in 1874, so this time frame was beyond that.

Second, it told me that Leon Bean was in business with a partner, Mr. Mallott.

Third, it confirmed that Leon’s business focus was on commercial properties.

Finding that little newspaper clipping also primed me for the next snippet I found from the Schellens index. From the same small town newspaper, barely a month later on February 11:

The contracting and building firm of Bean and Mallott has been dissolved by mutual consent. Mr. Bean will hereafter conduct the business.

Mutual consent? Oh, now doesn’t that open up a whole line of questions?! What a sedate and professional way to put it—when what may have really happened could have included rants, raves, screams, threats, loss of money, loss of reputation, impropriety…

Wait. My melodrama gene is carrying me away.

Ahem.

I would still like to know the rest of the story. This may mean some future glances into legal records archived in some dusty governmental storage bin.

Lest I get too carried away with the possibilities in my first two discovered entries, I have to focus on the fact that there are dozens more references to the various members of this Bean family and related lines in this same resource—not to mention in any of the other local volumes in this genealogical collection.

Take, for instance, this gem:

Married in San Francisco July 6^th, by Rev. T. Starr King, Mr. Samuel Bean of Redwood City to Miss Celia W. Hankerson, of Readfield, Maine.

So far in this series, I haven’t mentioned much about Leon’s father Samuel or his wife. I knew their names, and the fact that they both came—separately—from Maine to San Francisco. For now, though, I don’t have much to report because I don’t have access to records that would provide the information I need.

Somewhere buried in the oldest of my research files, I have a photograph of Samuel’s broken headstone from the historic but then-abandoned Union Cemetery in Redwood City—something, at the time, I had to obtain by stepping over weeds and trash in the deplorable condition of disrepair into which the cemetery had fallen. It did take transforming into a cemetery sleuth to actually locate the grave—finding, first, the current repository for the now-defunct funeral home’s records before proceeding to the cemetery. It was indeed like following a course to where “‘X’ marks the spot.” Only “X” wasn’t there to mark that spot, anymore.

But those were records that I’ve packed away—years ago—in a storage box. It will take some time to unearth those files. And I want to know the details now.

This brief newspaper article I found last weekend thanks to the Schellens collection housed with San Mateo County Genealogical Society’s holdings at the Cañada College Library. It was dated July 20, 1861. Though the entry did not include the name of the publication, I’m confident that will be a small detail to retrieve later.

In the meantime, look at what I’ve found: the specific town of origin for Celia Hankerson Bean. Now, I can begin matching up data for Hankersons in Readfield, Maine, and this one Hankerson who emigrated to California. No longer am I left to conjecture when it comes to where in Maine this one single young woman originated.

That, however, is just one instance of hands-on discoveries from an afternoon of researching—not online, but back in the stacks, the way things used to be before we all had personal computers and online services.

Don’t get me wrong. Online resources are fabulous. Nothing beats the search—and matching—capabilities of online databases. We now can do in hours what used to take weeks and weeks of pursuit, chasing after civil jurisdictions who charged fees while taking months to produce one single requested page in this paper-chase of ours.

Instant access online is great. But it is not complete. It is not everything. Maybe someday it will be. For now, it will not rob us of the primal thrill of the chase, the pursuit to find the elusive mention of that mystery ancestor. If that report is out there—though not yet digitized—we can still find it. It won’t be quick. And it won’t be easy. It may take some tactical effort. And relentless, dogged determination.

There still is a place for that boots-on-the-ground genealogy. And it is still worth the battle.

Families: Large or Small?

Anyone who has researched ancestors in the United States during the 1800s or before has surely noticed the one inherent characteristic of the listings of those times: the families were generally larger. Much larger.

For whichever of the litany of supposed reasons why family size seems to have fallen off a sheer cliff upon entrance into the twentieth century, the Bean family apparently opted to be an early adopter: they took to that new “style” before it even became fashionable. In the 1860s, Leon Bean found himself sharing any potential sibling rivalries with only one partner: his younger sister Blanche.

Leon and Blanche spent their youth in their family home in Redwood City. Their parents, however, were not native Californians. As you can imagine, in the years post-Gold Rush, California became a magnet for boatloads of immigrants—both from abroad, and also from points east in the United States.

Leon’s parents were a case in point. Samuel Bean, born somewhere in Maine around 1825, arrived by boat in San Francisco some time around 1850. Leon’s mother made the same journey as a single woman, leaving Maine bound for San Francisco.

Samuel married Celia W. Hankerson on July 5, 1861, in Redwood City, where the carpenter and his bride established their home. Leon, the oldest of the two children, arrived in May, 1863. His sister Blanche Celia followed on June 4, 1865.

Dates like those would qualify this Bean family to be designated by the San Mateo County Genealogical Society as Founding Families in the First Families of San Mateo County Project—if there were any descendants currently alive today.

Think of it: while we’ve read about states conducting First Families projects, this county designation would flag Samuel Bean’s family as one of a mere 3,214 residents in 1860.

However, because all the Bean family descendants I’ve known—or have been able to find—have all passed away, there is no mechanism in place with which to recognize this family’s place in San Mateo County history.

And it’s partly owing to the fact that this family has been so small.

Perhaps that’s why researching this line has resonated so much with me over the years. I’ve had a particular sensitivity to the state of having a family so small, it lacks even the sense of family-ness.

You may remember my small-family screed from last Thanksgiving—the post where I bemoaned that lack of sense of family. In researching the Bean family, I may have transferred some of that lonely sense from my own family to that of this Samuel Bean and his own “Us Four, No More.”

Lacking in this family were any of the usual photographs of the time, depicting ample family life busting from the seams of the homestead. Think about it: if it weren’t for Leon and Ella having twin boys, they, too, would have carried on the two child tradition. Moving through the next generation, neither Leona nor Bill had any children; it was blind-and-deaf twin Sam who became the sole provider of grandchildren for Leon and Ella. And of those two boys born to Sam and Maud, only the younger went on to have any children. In that generation? You guessed it: Earle had two children, too. And, as of last November, not a one of the whole bunch of them is with us, today.

Oh, I can reach back three generations to Leon’s sister and find an exception to that rule: Blanche and her husband actually had four children. Of course, I never met Blanche, nor did any of the family I did know ever mention her—the connection must have been lost decades before. Now, however, I can use some of those hard-earned genealogical research skills to see if there is anyone left of that branch of the original family that started with Samuel and Celia.

What makes me want to look so hard for someone with whom I have no remaining connection? Oh, maybe it’s just that same yearning felt as the kid sitting out in the cold on a lonely Thanksgiving morning, wishing there were family coming over for dinner.

 

Photograph: Around the dinner table, undated and unlabeled photograph from Bill Bean collection. Bill's wife, Ellen Danielson Bean, sits to the back of the left side of the table. Closest to the front of that side of the table may possibly be Bill's nephew, Sam Bean, junior.

Genealogy Research: My Two Trusty Friends

Think, for a minute, of the long-standing relationship between two close friends. They have a lot in common, but they also find that where one is weak, the other often compensates for that lack. They may find themselves operating in complementary roles, forming a close-knit partnership where each one shines at his or her own specialty—but each contributing toward the benefit of their association.

Sometimes, my online research tools seem to fall into those two symbiotic roles.

I love Ancestry.com, but it has its weak spots. Sometimes, I feel as if those shaking-leaf “hints” only show up after I point out the information to that vigilant search engine. What’s up with that?! I thought Ancestry.com was supposed to do the grunt work so I can collect all their search results and plug them into the correct spots.

Wouldn’t it be sweet if it did work that way? But it doesn’t.

That’s why I find myself sometimes operating two windows in tandem: one for Ancestry.com, where I plug in my findings as I go; the other for a search engine that actually does some searching, like FamilySearch.org.

Together, we bounce back and forth between documents found and data already listed, to evaluate the rightness of suggested matches.

With the search prowess of FamilySearch.org (or other programs, whether free or subscription-based), I sometimes unearth unexpected discoveries that way.

Take Leon S. Bean’s mother, the former Celia W. Hankerson of Maine. I had no idea she had married a second time, after the relatively early death of her husband, Samuel Bean. However, in playing around with data in the various fields (I sometimes deliberately leave some fields blank to see what else might rise to the surface), I came across a revelation: Celia W. Bean married a David E. Costellow of Sacramento, California, in 1896. Cross-checking with other databases, I saw notice of Celia Costello’s death in 1905, back in Redwood City, thanks to the local records of the San Mateo County Genealogical Society’s website. And that led me to the matching Find-A-Grave entry for Celia at Redwood City’s Union Cemetery—listed with that same new surname.

Yesterday, I mentioned discovering the maiden name of Celia’s grandson’s wife, Ellen. That discovery was owing to a small database—thanks again to the San Mateo County group—but you can be sure that, once I made that discovery, I was off and running, checking out everything I could about it.

Once again, I returned to my two trusty genealogical friends, Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org. Bouncing back and forth, I worked that family line as far as I could, comparing notes between the two websites before entering any records in my online tree. Yet even then, Ancestry.com—like some demure damsel on a first date—was hesitant in offering up any hints until after I added more data. Frustrating.

I sometimes force the program’s hand by entering guesses in some of the fields. For instance, state of death. Even though I’m not one hundred percent sure, I’ll make an informed guess and see if it pokes Ancestry.com in the ribs. Sometimes, the ruse works, and I’ll be offered a suggestion of a specific record—which I can then examine by cross-checking on FamilySearch.org—and decide whether to accept or reject. Surprisingly, the suggestions are quite accurate, even if I instigated the discovery myself by feeding those fields my guesses instead of solid evidence.

I’m not sure whether Ancestry.com just needs to beef up its search mechanism or what the case may be. But I’ve learned that when it comes to Ancestry.com—as much as I appreciate what it has to offer—I’ve got to find a secondary program which will form a good partnership. Once that symbiotic relationship is on a roll, though, I can make some real headway in new family discoveries.


Photograph, above right, of two unidentified women; the woman to the left in the darker suit possibly Leona Bean Grant of Alameda, California, and a friend or cousin; from the private collection of William S. Bean.

Settling Down to Married Life

One can hardly say that Ella Shields Bean had developed a “sense of place” in her early adult years. Having arrived from her native Illinois along with her family by 1875—when she was about ten years of age, herself—she spent some of her teen years living in San Francisco, and some of those years living in Redwood City. By the time she was twenty, her family had moved yet again to a farming community far removed from the northern California ambience of the Bay Area.

At least the family was still in California. However, that’s one huge state in which to say one is “still” together.

I have so much more to learn about this family—both the Shields branch and the Bean branch. Researching the Bean family pre-personal-computer-age, thankfully, was made somewhat easier by virtue of the Bean family’s arrival at about the same time as the Gold Rush. While I didn’t have the benefit of the multiple online resources we’re blessed with today, it serendipitously turns out that a forty-five minute drive brings me to the California State Library—a place which, over the years, has accumulated an archive of every single newspaper ever published in the state.

Well…at least, that’s what the librarian told me at the time.

Among the collection of California newspapers duly indexed by meticulous librarians, the Bean family—as well as the Shields family in their later years—figured amply within the entries in the newspaper index. For which I’ve been ever grateful!

If I can locate where my own less-than-meticulous filing system doomed the photocopies of relevant articles to be filed, I’ll be able to share those tidbits with you in the next few days. I haven’t missed the fact that these particular issues are still not within the collections of those several online archival companies, so finding my copies will be our only opportunity to get that exact zing of the wording.

Meanwhile, let’s meet Ella’s groom: the California-born Leon Samuel Bean.

Leon was born in May of 1863, so he was only a couple years older than Ella. It makes me wonder if the two of them might have attended school together. Since neither family seemed particularly religious—unlike the other family lines I’ve researched, where I owe my success to the zealous record-keeping of the religious institutions to which those families were affiliated—I have no idea where else Ella might have met Leon. Perhaps Leon’s younger sister Blanche, who was the same age as Ella, might have been the link that connected the two, but how am I to find this out, now?

Leon and Blanche were born to two Maine residents who had, independent of one another, decided to make the long, harrowing journey around the horn from the northeastern coast of the country in Maine, all the way to San Francisco. If I remember correctly, father Samuel arrived first in San Francisco, followed later by his wife-to-be, Celia Hankerson.

I know little else about Leon in his younger years. Unfortunately, Bill Bean’s jumble of family photographs does not include any portraits of Leon before the one I found, labeled, “L. S. Bean, 48 yrs.”

At that point—which would have been about the year 1911—he looks formal, dignified, professional.

And quite bald.

Such a professional portrait would not be surprising, considering Leon Bean was known not only in Redwood City and San Mateo County, but also in neighboring Santa Clara County, as a reputable general contractor.

However, the date of this photograph—the only one of Leon S. Bean left in his son’s collection—indicates that it was taken on the eve of an event sure to make a substantial difference in the life of each of his family members.

And those newspapers would be sure to tell of it.