Tracing Harriet

 

To trace Harriet Blain's whereabouts after the tragic death of her husband John, it helped to follow the trail of another man.

His name was Benjamin Johnson, a forty three year old bachelor from England who sailed to America around 1891. By 1910, he settled in Fredonia, Kansas, and worked at a glass factory. Along with a coworker from New York, a man half his age, he boarded at the home of the widowed Mrs. Harriet Blain at 819 Seventh Street.

That was when the 1910 census was compiled on April 15. By August 10, the nearby Neodesha Daily Sun ran an insertion on the front page listing the latest marriage licenses. Two residents of Fredonia were the sole names featured in the boxed notation: Benjamin Johnson and Harriet Bell Blaine.

Tracing Harriet and her second husband from that time onward became a blur. Somehow, by 1920, Benjamin Johnson appeared in the annual directory, not for any place in Kansas, but for a city in northern California. His address was listed as 1436 S. San Joaquin Street in Stockton, California.

A surname like Johnson could complicate matters for family history researchers, and Stockton's directory presented such a factor. Fortunately, of the two Benjamin Johnsons in the city directory, only one was identified as a glassworker. In 1920, the likelihood of a woman being listed in a city directory would be slim, and there was no entry for Mrs. Harriet Johnson—if, indeed, they had actually married back in Kansas in 1910.

However, turning to the 1920 census, there was an entry for a Harriet Blain in the enumeration for Stockton, California—at 1436 S. San Joaquin Street. To be sure, it was our Harriet, for her four daughters were named in the household, but no Benjamin Johnson. 

At the time, Harriet was working as a practical nurse in private homes, according to the census record. Her eldest daughter Emma was by then twenty years of age, Rozella seventeen, and the twins thirteen years old. But where was Benjamin?

According to the 1920 census, Harriet was listed as divorced. I have yet to find any record of the divorce proceedings, including which state drew up the document, but it is clear that Harriet wouldn't have moved her daughters so far from Kansas if she had coincidentally traveled that distance while separated from her second husband.

That brief blip of an appearance in the 1920 census was followed not long after with a tiny insertion in the Stockton Daily Evening Record in May of the following year. Harriet had died on May 22, 1921, and was buried at Park View Cemetery in Manteca. Her funeral announcement noted that she was mourned by "many sorrowing friends in attendance" at the chapel of the B. C. Wallace Funeral Home, but contained no mention of any remaining family, though her daughters all survived her.

Having lived in Stockton before the 1924 cut-off for recognition in our county's First Families program, Harriet Isabel Blain Johnson was indeed eligible for the certificate program—but one could hardly call her a pioneer in the region, nor someone who had set out to establish her home in our county. She was more a victim of her circumstances than her intentional agency. And yet, she would qualify for recognition as the program is currently laid out.

As for Benjamin Johnson—the right Benjamin Johnson, immigrant glassworker from England—it was clearly he whose death notice appeared in the city's Daily Independent on the first day of September, 1928, with the promise of a funeral notice to follow. While so far, I can find none following for the "native of England," nothing in the original notice mentioned any family members. Perhaps he became one of those many emigrants who, leaving their native home, traveled alone to a distant land, never to be heard from again. 

Unintended Consequences

 

When it comes to researching our ancestors, perhaps we assume that they came to live in a place where they planned to settle. In the case of one woman who ended up in the county where I now live, one could hardly say that was the case. In a way, her life seemed to be a series of unintended consequences. But what do you do when your husband is struck by a passing train and subsequently dies of his injuries, leaving four young children who still need a home and care?

That was apparently the story of young Harriet Isabel Beeman, who married John Cunningham Blain in Vernon County, Missouri, in 1897. By 1899, John and Harriet welcomed Emma, the first of their four daughters, into their home, by then in Kansas. Yet, just as the last of their children—twins Vera and Vida—turned two years of age, tragedy struck the home. For some reason, John Blain, crossing the railroad tracks in town one day, failed to realize that alongside a standing train another one was passing through town.

I wouldn't have known any of this story, had I not found a photograph of young John Blain in an antique store close to my home. Once I spotted that abandoned picture, I wanted to rescue that orphaned photo and return it to family members. That story I shared here at A Family Tapestry almost exactly seven years ago. 

John's widow tried her best to seek some sort of financial recourse through a lawsuit filed against the railroad company, but ultimately lost. Following all that had befallen her, Harriet eventually turned to one traditional means women resorted to, for providing support for her children: running a boarding home in Fredonia, a nearby town in Kansas.

While that became a new residence for the Blain family, it certainly was nowhere near the place in Northern California where Harriet and her daughters ended up. The cause of her decision to move again to a place so much farther away became yet another step in what likely was a series of unintended consequence for the bereft family.

That became one of those stories of a character introduced into the timeline who dropped into their lives, made his mark, then seemingly disappeared, leaving the family far from where they had ever imagined they would be at the start of their troubles. But because of that series of events, a very unknown Harriet and her daughters unexpectedly became eligible to be recognized as First Families material in our county, arriving here before the century mark for this program. What do you do with an unexpected residence like that?

Tomorrow, we'll take a look at what reasons may have brought the Blain family so far from their home in Kansas.

The Stuff of Genealogical Legend

 

We've all learned to spot them, those telltale signs that a family history might not be exactly, well, history. That's the stuff of genealogical legend, those stories that begin more like fairy tale than fact: "There were three brothers...."

Perhaps we have become over-sensitized to such signs. I know I have, any time I read an account in an over-poetic biographical sketch from a century past, seeking to put the best spin on the tale of a local celebrity's roots. Perhaps, as I work my way through the family of my mother-in-law's fourth great-grandfather, Lyman Jackson, it comes as no surprise to find in the biographical sketch of one of his descendants—a judge in Atchison County, Kansas—such a "three brothers" story encased in the summary of his life and ancestry.

The story started out innocently enough:

Judge Horace M. Jackson was born near Albion, Penn., July 11, 1839, a son of Lyman Jackson, who was the son of Michael Jackson, whose father was also named Michael, and was a native of Ireland.

Granted, since we've learned that Lyman Jackson died in 1835, the story has already taken on a mythical air. But with one flip of the page where the judge's story was printed in Sheffield Ingalls' History of Atchison County, Kansas, we run headfirst into that story of those magical three brothers:

Michael Jackson, the founder of the family in America, came from Ireland and settled near Hartford, Conn.... He had three sons, one of whom...died in service as a soldier.... Another son went south, and the third was Michael Jackson, the direct ancestor of Horace M. Jackson.

While those three sons might have added a nice touch to the judge's family legend, my concern was with examining that family line to see whether the remainder of the entry contained enough truth to serve as trailblazer for my own Jackson family history questions. After all, the text provided names of spouses and dates of birth for members of that family line. Yet, I didn't feel confident in using those details after seeing the introductory error in the very first paragraph.

After all, if Lyman Jackson were this man's father, either Horace had to have been born years earlier, or Lyman's date of death was inscribed incorrectly on his headstone.

Thankfully, reading further, I did discover that Judge Horace Jackson's father was actually David Bardsley Jackson, and it was his grandfather who was Lyman Jackson—perhaps a slight oversight on the part of the book's editor.

In addition, the entry detailed the various places where the family migrated after leaving Pennsylvania—helpful information that might not otherwise have been traceable, depending on when the family moved. The entry also provided occupational details, described what home life was like for the newlyweds in the family, and gave the names of the judge's siblings, including married names for his sisters.

Of course, I might have been more easily persuaded to initially believe those useful details if we hadn't started off on the wrong foot with a glaring mis-match of son's birth and father's date of death—not to mention inclusion of the "three sons" trope that has become a glaring warning sign to genealogists. Looking at it all philosophically, though, I suppose we can chalk this up to a great learning experience in the warning signs advising researchers to proceed slowly and with caution whenever we find a resource other than confirmed documentation we've learned to trust.   

 

Fond Memories of Someone I Never Met

 

Today I want to share a story of a mother-in-law and her daughter-in-law. For those of us who grew up in the sixties, I realize the topic of mothers-in-law became the era's target for a wide range of public commentary, hardly any of which was flattering or even politely understated. Thus, any time I run across a story of a daughter-in-law nurturing a positive, ongoing relationship with her mother-in-law, I know I'm making the acquaintance of some special people.

Last week, I received an email from such a daughter-in-law. But before I can tell you about that, I need to step backwards nearly five years to a blog post here at A Family Tapestry, introducing the subject of an abandoned photograph of someone I called "The Man With the Moustache."

I had found the 1880s era cabinet card featuring the likeness of a resident of Walnut, Kansas, named John Blain in an antique store not far from my home in California. Someone, I reasoned, would like to be reunited with the photograph of this ancestor, so I began researching the history of John Blain. As it turns out, his was not a happy story, for tragedy left his wife a widow with four young children when John was only forty four.

Eventually, John's family left Kansas for California, where his children grew up, married, and had families of their own. I knew that, because my goal in reuniting this "orphan" photo with the Blain family's descendants meant I needed to research his family line. It wasn't long before I found a subscriber on Ancestry.com who turned out to be a diligent researcher of the Blain family. I sent her a note through Ancestry's messaging system, offering to send her the photograph of a young John Blain. I received an immediate reply: "As I read your message I got chills down my spine...."

My correspondent, though not a direct descendant, was daughter-in-law to Helen, John Blain's granddaughter. Now well into her nineties, Helen had never met John Blain, herself—her mother was only about four at the time of John's tragic death—but her daughter-in-law was positive Helen would remember his story. 

Helen's daughter-in-law had a plan. Since Christmas was approaching, and Helen was traveling to spend the holidays with this daughter-in-law's family, I would quickly mail the photograph so the family could present it as a special surprise gift to Helen.

The minute Helen saw the picture, her daughter-in-law told me, "The first words out of her mouth were, 'That's my grandfather!' She knew right away."

With that post-holiday exchange of emails about that unusual Christmas present, Helen's daughter-in-law sent me a photograph of Helen, holding her gift. While the photo was a wonderful way to illustrate the full-circle journey of an abandoned family portrait, I am always shy to share information on living people without their explicit permission. In this case, arranging such a written release might have been complicated, and so I left the story with a final post, calling it "On its Way Home."

This Christmas season will mark five years since that exchange, as I mailed off the photo on December 20, 2017. Thus I was somewhat surprised to see a familiar name pop up in my in-box the other day, asking if I remembered sending the photo of John Blain to Helen, and whether I still had the picture her daughter-in-law had sent me, showing a smiling Helen holding her grandfather's portrait.

This is the kind of poignant email which can be hard to receive. Granted, I never met Helen. But I still felt like I shared a small—incredibly tiny—part of her life through that recovered picture of John Cunningham Blain. When her daughter-in-law wrote to give me permission to use Helen's photo, I knew what was coming next in that email: the family had just lost a beloved mother, grandmother, and, yes, mother-in-law.

Rest in peace, dear Helen. What a story your family had to share.

Above: Photograph of Helen holding picture of her grandfather, John Cunningham Blain, given by her daughter-in-law on Christmas, 2017; photograph used by family's permission.
 

      

The Trouble With Kansas—and Oklahoma, too

 

With six routes to a possible confirmation of a woman's identity, you'd think the answer would be nearly within grasp. But no, thanks to a particular restriction in the state of Oklahoma, I may never find my answer.

I had found a possible answer to my question, "What became of Sarah Murdock Nolan of Lafayette, Indiana?" when I located an 1880 census enumeration in Wichita, Kansas, which included the names and correct locations of birth of the oldest of her children. The only ones missing from that 1880 record were her husband John and two children. Those children we later confirmed had died before the family left Lafayette.

To confirm that those whom we later found in Kansas were actually children of the right Sarah Nolan, the next step seemed easy enough: follow the children through their life's history to obtain their own record of death. If any of those children died after 1900—after 1910 would be preferable—his or her death certificate should include a confirmation of the mother's maiden name. Easy peasy.

Not, apparently, if the child died in either Kansas or Oklahoma.

Yesterday, we explored the possibility that any of Sarah Nolan's children died in Kansas after that magic date heralding the "modern" death certificate. Despite Sarah being mother to at least nine children, that list of possibilities was narrowed down to a weak "maybe" for only one descendant: Samuel. Even at that, I can't determine where Samuel died; I only can see that he possibly was buried in Kansas. Like his mother Sarah, he could have died while visiting family in Oklahoma, then was returned for burial back home in Kansas.

Looking for death records of ancestors in Kansas is not a streamlined matter. Although there is access to some online information on deaths in Sedgwick County where the Nolans once lived—or for anywhere else in the state, for that matter—there are gaps in the series of available dates. Besides, the collection on FamilySearch.org providing such records is considered a "Legacy Collection" and, as it turns out, doesn't include the information I'd be seeking in Sedgwick County.

No matter. That was the chance to trace only one out of six of Sarah's children dying after the early 1900s. Onward to the rest, who all moved to Oklahoma. And that becomes the crux of the problem: Oklahoma, it turns out, is quite particular about who can seek copies of their residents' death records.

While Oklahoma mandated statewide registration of deaths by 1908, that requirement was not consistently achieved before 1930. Worse, as the FamilySearch wiki notes, "Records before 1940 were placed on file inconsistently." So much for the deaths of all but Sabina Nolan Martin, whose passing occurred in 1945.

But there's more. Should I want to obtain any of those Nolan descendants' death records—assuming they did make it into the state file—the state of Oklahoma imposes restrictions. A 2016 state law considers deaths occurring more than fifty years ago "open records." While that may sound encouraging, the law also requires a genealogist to obtain written permission of a descendant of the deceased to order a copy plus document the relationship between the descendant and the deceased.

All for the simple step of confirming what Sarah Nolan's maiden name might have been.

Granted, there are some Oklahoma death records available online. However, like those we discovered for Kansas, the Oklahoma records on FamilySearch.org are considered a Legacy Collection—containing, at best, a partial index of records.

Keeping that now impossibly distant research goal still in sight, I realized there may be another way to achieve my purposes. With our last post on this September research goal tomorrow, we'll take a look at that option as well as determine next steps for resolving this research dilemma.  

 

Moving Over to Oklahoma

 

Does it sometimes seem as if the record-keeping powers that be are conspiring to keep us genies from discovering the answers to our family history questions?

Here I am, still grappling with this month's research goal, now finding myself in a wild chase to identify whether the Sarah Nolan I've found in 1880 Wichita, Kansas, is one and the same as the Sarah Murdock Nolan who disappeared from Lafayette, Indiana, after 1860. In the process, I stumbled upon a one-paragraph acknowledgement of the passing of someone by that same name. Only problem: this Sarah Nolan's death was not in Kansas, not even back in Indiana, but in Oklahoma.

Same person? I'll give it to you in a nutshell, but the pathway to personal assurance for this researcher is far from straightforward.

Apparently, one by one, each of Sarah Nolan's children left their home—and, in some cases, business—in Wichita to move to Norman, Oklahoma.

Oldest of Sarah's surviving children—John, one of her children born in Wisconsin—left Kansas originally for Garfield County, Oklahoma, along with his wife Mary and their three children. By the time of the 1930 census, though, John, by now widowed, had moved to Norman.

Younger brother Tony, having met Louisa Sandelback in Norman, along with his bride became the first couple to celebrate their wedding in the new Saint Patrick's Church in Norman on December 27, 1898. By then, Tony had been a resident of Norman "for years."

Tony's younger brother Peter, a lifelong confirmed bachelor, was a holdout in Kansas—as was older brother Samuel—but finally moved in with his sister Sabina and brother-in-law Owen Martin in Norman by the time of the 1930 census, adding one more to the tally of Nolan siblings who moved from Wichita to Oklahoma.

And baby of the family Sarah—nicknamed Sadie—followed her September 1900 wedding in Wichita with a move to the home of her husband, William Synnott, in Norman.

With that, we have a tally of every Nolan sibling  moving to Oklahoma and eventually settling in Norman—except Samuel. But even in Samuel's case, I can't be entirely sure where he died; all I can find is that he was buried in Kansas, not Oklahoma, according to what appears to be his 1924 headstone.

There is a reason for being so particular about where each of these Nolan siblings died. Remember, my goal in tracing these lines of descent is solely to locate a death certificate for one of the children of Sarah Murdock Nolan. I'm looking in particular for that document entry stating mother's maiden name. I still want confirmation that this Sarah Nolan whose similarly-named children showed up in Kansas was one and the same as the Sarah Nolan who left Indiana.

That, as it turns out, is not a goal easily accomplished. You see, there are some limitations to accessing information on deaths in Oklahoma. And if you think the easy work-around is to pursue information on the lone descendant who was buried in Kansas, think again. We'll take a look at the research pitfalls for accessing this information tomorrow.

Not Quite to the Endgame Yet

 

If there is an endgame in this quest to connect Sarah Nolan in Wichita with the Irish immigrant Murdock family back in Lafayette, Indiana, I have yet to strategically eliminate the excess playing pieces on this genealogy game board. Here I've traced the suspected Sarah Murdock Nolan from the adopted city of her brothers in Indiana to a new home in Wichita, Kansas. But the trail doesn't end there.

The next step in my strategy to confirm this Sarah's identity was to find the death record of one of her children with mother's maiden name included. Just one. Apparently, that is not to be had—at least, as far as I can see from this point.

I began this secondary maneuver with Sarah's oldest son, James—until realizing his untimely death in 1892 would not achieve our goal.

The next step was to trace the timeline of Sarah's second surviving son, John Nolan. As you can probably guess by now, that tactic is not turning out to be any more successful than my first attempt. And we have three more sons and two daughters yet to go. We've hardly begun to clear the game board.

After all, keep in mind Sarah's oldest son was born in Ohio, the next few children in Wisconsin, before the Nolans moved to Indiana, presumably to live closer to Sarah's siblings.

And then, there was Kansas. At least, that's what I presume was the next move for our Sarah Nolan, sister to the successful Murdock brothers in Lafayette, Indiana. Yet, finding confirmation for such an assumption is still not within our grasp.

Taking a step backward—though not yet in retreat—I looked for any mention of the death of Sarah, herself, in Wichita newspapers. I was rewarded with a single, paragraph-long, entry in The Wichita Daily Eagle on Thursday, June 3, 1897:

 

Mrs. Sarah Nolan died at Norman, O. T., Tuesday night. Her remains arrived in this city last night at 8:30 over the Santa Fe and were taken to the home of Owen J. Martin, 509 Campbell avenue, West Side. The funeral services will be held at the Pro-cathedral at 9 o'clock Friday morning. Funeral was postponed for the arrival of relatives from St. Louis.

From Saint Louis? What relatives? Suddenly, with this announcement, I'm wondering whether I have the right family at all.  

Newspaper images above from page 6 of  The Wichita Daily Eagle, Thursday, June 3, 1897, as found via GenealogyBank.

Still Seeking Signs

 

Sometimes, we can find ourselves researching a family whose members we think are related to our line, only to discover we were on the wrong track all along. That's how it's been this month as I try to connect the Murdock sisters back to their parents in Lafayette, Indiana, and then, hopefully, to the generation before that, back in Ireland. No matter what records I've found, I'm still left seeking more signs to clarify family connections.

The youngest of the three Murdock sisters, Sarah, had married a man by the name of John Nolan. As we've seen, John and Sarah moved around the midwest quite a few times, judging from the birth location for each Nolan child, as recorded in census records. Still, it was somewhat of a surprise to me to find Sarah's family—if, indeed, this was the correct one—once again appearing in another state by the time of the 1880 census.

This discovery in Sedgwick County, Kansas, was one I wasn't entirely confident about, as I mentioned last week. That, of course, launched me on yet another search—this time, to find any documentation to confirm I had found the right Sarah Nolan, instead of another Irish immigrant with the same name. By the end of last week, we had tried following the story of Sarah's oldest son, James, but that ended with the discovery of his sad demise at his own hand in 1892, when he was not quite forty.

This week begins the search all over again, this time with the next-oldest remaining son, John Nolan. Referring back to the 1886 city directory where we had found listings for Sarah and her family, it is reassuring to see the note, for those Nolan family members living at 745 South Main Street, that they had arrived in Wichita from Indiana. Likewise, a Kansas state census, taken in 1885, confirmed the Nolan family's arrival from Indiana.

The only drawback: by 1885, there was no sign in Sarah's household of her son John in the census or the city directory. However, by the time of the 1889 edition, there is mention of John Nolan in the Wichita city directory.

Take that back—there was not one mention of John Nolan in that city directory, but two. Though we are provided with the helpful information that, like his Murdock uncles before him, our John worked as a grocer—same as his brother Tony—we still need to proceed cautiously to ensure we don't end up researching the wrong line.

The bottom line is our hope to discover a death record for one of the Nolan children, identifying the maiden name of their mother, Sarah. We'll need at least one of the children to have lived into the beginning of the twentieth century, when states began issuing death certificates with such identifying information as parents' names. Let's see what we can find on Sarah's son John tomorrow. 

Finding the Unexpected

 

Those who choose to delve into family history are sometimes warned ahead of time about finding "skeletons in the closet." We seldom take those warnings to heart, perhaps even find a perverse curiosity egging us onward. But when we do stumble upon the tragic, we can't say we hadn't been forewarned.

Perhaps I should have known that a man dying young—even back in the late nineteenth century, when medical advances hadn't yet brought the remedies we now take for granted—might not have encountered such an untimely demise simply on account of a weak constitution. I certainly hadn't expected the blunt reporting served up to the public in the local newspaper upon the passing of Sarah Murdock Nolan's oldest son, James.

Included on the headstone for John J. and Sarah Nolan, James' date of death was given as July 13, 1892. Beneath that date was given his precise age at his passing: thirty nine years, two months, and four days.

Like any genealogist would do, I headed to online resources to look up James Nolan's obituary. Remember, I'm still not certain this Nolan family in Wichita, Kansas, was the family by the same name I had been researching in Lafayette, Indiana. I needed an obituary to help confirm James' family constellation, especially regarding his connection to his mother's Murdock siblings.

It turned out that reports of James' death spanned three days in The Wichita Daily Eagle—published, ironically, by M. M. Murdock & Bro. On the first day afterward, July 14, an article spanning nearly a full column length gave the details on the passing of James "Noland." 

Right away, the article provided the address for the home of "Widow Noland" as 745 South Main Street. This was an address which the 1886 Wichita city directory confirmed was also the residence of Peter and Tony Nolan, two others listed as sons in Sarah Nolan's 1880 census entry.

Under the unfortunate headline, "The Razor Route," the subtitle confirmed the likely cause of James Nolan's death: suicide. The article included a detailed report of the aftermath, but for all its length, the report mentioned no family names other than that of the youngest sister, who was the only one at home at the time of her brother's unexpected act.

Problem: that young sister's name was given as Sadie. The 1880 census record I found mentioned no child by the name of Sadie—until we recall that Sadie was once one of many nicknames used for the given name Sarah. And Sarah, in this family, was her mother's namesake and the youngest in the household.

Despite lack of names provided in the report, it was possible to glean a few other details about James and his family. He was "a railroad man," an occupation I had suspected was the reason the family had left Indiana for Kansas. He was also "addicted to drink," which longstanding problem had brought corresponding health issues for which he had been reluctantly seeking treatment. He was not a cooperative patient, however, continuing to drink while taking whatever the "Keeley cure" might have entailed, and suffering from the side effects of the treatment.

An added complication to James Nolan's sad story was that his mother—presumably the widow Sarah Murdock Nolan—had recently left home for "a visit east." The follow-up article in the next day's newspaper provided more detail on that trip. She was "in Indiana visiting."

Not wishing to delay the funeral and burial until their mother's return home, James' brothers in Kansas decided to go ahead with the burial immediately, which occurred on July 15, 1892, from the Nolan residence. Considering funeral protocols of that era, presumably this decision spared their mother from the shock of seeing the condition of her son—and gave her sons additional time to clean the home of any remaining signs of the tragedy claiming James' life.

In researching the many lines related to my family's history, every so often such a story will make its unexpected appearance. Thankfully, those times are rare. Every family—no matter how unremarkable or unobtrusive—has a story to tell. It's just difficult to encounter those of such extreme pain.       

Not the Details We Were Expecting

 

It is exciting—at long last—to find ourselves on the brink of the big reveal, examining the evidence we had been seeking, knowing that finally, we can obtain the confirmation of our research hypothesis. In our case this week, though, the elation of finding the record was quickly followed by the deflation of realizing these were not the details we were expecting.

We've been on a long search lately, trying to find a Murdock sibling whose records might divulge the family's origin in Ireland. It seems each sibling leads us farther away from our goal. Even though it was exciting to discover there were two more sisters to follow, along with the several Murdock brothers we had already found, tracing younger sister Sarah Murdock Nolan has not been an easy task.

We are currently searching for Sarah seven hundred miles from the Murdock siblings' adopted American home in Lafayette, Indiana, wondering whether the Sarah Nolan in Wichita, Kansas, is really the Sarah we are looking for. The signs so far seemed promising—names, birth years and locations in the 1880 census agreed with our last sighting of the Nolan family back in 1860.

There is, however, one slight problem: this Sarah was listed as a widow in the 1880 census, so we don't really know if this was Sarah, wife of John, or another Sarah. One approach was to follow the trail of each of the children to see whether any subsequent documentation mentioned their father's name.

I started this new search with James Nolan, the oldest child, which led me to a memorial showing a small, cracked headstone for a man by that name who died young at thirty nine years of age. Included was a note by a volunteer stating that James was "on stone with Sarah and John J. Nolan." That prompted me to search for another memorial at the same cemetery—Calvary Cemetery, Wichita's oldest Catholic cemetery—to confirm those were the names of James' parents.

Sure enough, the information pointed to ages that seemed reasonably older than James' 1853 year of birth. On this other, significantly larger headstone, Sarah Nolan's age was given as sixty five, and John's was listed as fifty eight.

There was, however, one stumbling block with this discovery. While the 1880 census had shown our Sarah as a widow—no sign of a husband's name included in that household—John Nolan's entry on that headstone indicated his year of death was 1882. Where was John in the 1880 census?

I have observed, in researching other families during this time period, that women who were divorced or separated from their husband would sometimes take the socially easier route of just claiming they were widowed. Perhaps this was the case with this Sarah in Wichita. The next question would be: where was John for the last two years of his life? Really, the bigger question would be: was this the same Sarah on the headstone the same as the one I had found in the 1880 census? And would this John and Sarah be one and the same as the couple who lived in Indiana, back in 1860?

Nothing is ever easy. In fact, family history research can be quite messy. In first spotting James, rather than his parents John and Sarah, I searched for some other records to confirm I had the right son. In the process, I stumbled upon a sad explanation which ran its course through three editions of the local newspaper. In talking about those reports tomorrow, we'll see what else can be gleaned about this Nolan family in the process. 

To Play Devil's Advocate

 

Is it possible to play devil's advocate in genealogy? 

In trying to discover what became of Sarah Murdock and her husband, John Nolan, we're faced with the disappearance of John—in fact, of the entire family from the place where we last found them—by 1880. What we do have, however, is a census entry in a place seven hundred miles from the city where we last saw them, in Lafayette, Indiana. Only problem: no John, no son George, no daughter Mary Ann in 1880—but the addition of several other children previously unaccounted for. Could this be our Nolan household?

Let's play devil's advocate by arguing that this Nolan family in the 1880 census—sans John—is the same as that of John and Sarah, back in Lafayette.

Taking a look at the 1880 census in Wichita, we can trace that Nolan family's movements through the midwest, simply by using the birth locations listed for each of the Nolan children—if, of course, they belong to the right Nolan family.

Here are the names found in the Nolan household in 1880 Kansas, far from the place our Nolan family called home in Lafayette, Indiana. With oldest son James, we realize the family had once settled in Ohio. Son John was born in Wisconsin, but the rest of the family showed their birthplace in Indiana, up through the youngest child, Sarah, born about 1874. Even though the younger children—Samuel, Tony, Peter, Sabina, and Sarah—did not appear in the last census in which we had found our Nolan family (way back in 1860), if this is the right family, this record shows us the family had remained in Indiana for quite a while.

The question is: if this is our Nolan family, when did they arrive in Kansas? Fortunately, we have a way to possibly answer that question. Like many other states which call for an enumeration to be taken halfway between the decade marks of the federal census, Kansas followed suit. Copies of their census record for 1875 can be found online.

The trouble for us is that, no matter which way I searched, I could not find the Nolans in Kansas for the 1875 census. That is not surprising. After all, what mother would want to undertake a seven hundred mile journey to a new home with a newborn in tow?

However, if we jump forward to the 1885 census in Kansas, the birth estimate for baby Sarah edges forward to 1875. Thus, with her place of birth again pinpointed as Indiana, we can call off the chase for any shred of evidence in Kansas, back in 1875. The family must still have resided in Indiana at that point—if we can trust the reporting party to have given correct answers and the enumerator to have written them down correctly.

That detail also provides indirect evidence of father John Nolan's presence in Indiana up to about the same time, give or take about nine months. But if this was indeed the right family in Kansas, where was John in 1880?

We can, of course, go straight to the chase, assuming John Nolan died sometime between 1875 and 1880, and look for cemetery records either in Lafayette or Wichita. However, with some of the Nolan children buried in the Catholic cemetery in Lafayette—but not alongside their father John in the family plot—it seems safe to assume Indiana was not the place of John's passing.

On the other hand, there is conveniently a headstone bearing John Nolan's name in a Catholic cemetery in Wichita. But don't get too excited just yet. Despite what seem like reasonable arguments supporting the contention that this Nolan household in Sedgwick County is indeed that of our Sarah, the Nolan headstone in Wichita presents another sticky detail. We'll consider that problem tomorrow, and see whether there is any information to support or reject our hypothesis that we have found the right Nolan household.

Flora Finds her way Home

Sometimes, when I research an abandoned antique family photograph with the hopes of sending it home, I never do find signs of living descendants. I'm still holding several of those pictures, waiting to run across a family member who would love to receive them.

Others are quick finds: the subject's tree is readily discovered online and traced down to the most recent generation...and the descendant is actively working on that tree and responds quickly to messages from other researchers.

But there are some who posted their tree online and then, seemingly, just walked away and never gave another thought to their family history. I can send messages to such people, but I seldom hear back from them.

Such has been the case with some of the photos I've found during this last trip to the antique stores of Sonora, California. I've figured out who the descendants might have been. I just can't seem to entice them to answer me—including some researchers who seem to be closely related to the family of William Malphus Knapp.

So, after a run of such experiences, I hadn't had much hope for a quick answer when I reached out to a descendant of Flora Knapp Jones a week before Thanksgiving.

It was Thursday evening, November 15, and I had just returned home from our genealogical society's last meeting of the year. I decided to send a late-night message to a researcher whose tree included Flora Knapp, sister of William Malphus Knapp, whose story had run in A Family Tapestry that same morning.

By the next morning, I had received a reply from Lauren in Dallas, Texas, explaining that Flora was her second great grandmother. Lauren actually remembers, from her childhood years, Flora's daughter Mildred. According to Lauren, her great grandmother Mildred, Flora's daughter, was quite talented. Mildred was Lauren's first piano teacher, and the family still has one of Mildred's paintings. To have this connection to Mildred's mother in the form of a photo of a young Flora Knapp confirms that her picture is returning home to a family which still cares very much about their personal heritage.

Flora's photo was in the mail the very next day, slated to arrive in Dallas on Monday. By Tuesday, I got confirmation that Lauren had indeed received the photo, and that it had arrived in good condition without any mishaps.

Any time I've been able to return a photograph to family, it has always been with expressions of gratefulness for being able to receive such a lost treasure. We seldom know what we don't have, of course, though most of us can imagine how we'd feel if such an unexpected gift were handed to us.

Of course, when something like this transpires during the holiday season, it seems to come with a second spurt of joy, just as happened last Christmas when a descendant got to surprise her husband's grandmother—still alive at ninety three—with the photo of her father, whom she lost as a child (John Blain, the mustached man who died as a young father after being hit by a train in Kansas).

At this point in researching the extended family of William Malphus Knapp and his wife Clara Alice Hoover Knapp Banfill, so far we've managed to return one photo back home to family. I'm still waiting on responses to two other messages. And we've still got another Banfill descendant and one Knapp descendant yet to meet—as well as some Knapp cousins, likely from a preceding generation. But for now, I'll celebrate one more who has made her way back home to family.

Above: Close-up of undated photograph of Flora Knapp of Douglass, Kansas; original now returned to a second great granddaughter in Texas.

Tracing Vina's Path

In trying to confirm whether each of the wives of George Banfill was actually sister to the other, one way to produce evidence to that fact is to view records of the children of George's first marriage. We have tried that for two of George's three children—Charles and Hazelle—and come up empty-handed. There is, however, one other opportunity: George's daughter Vina.

To try and track Vina's life story, though, turns out to be more challenging than one would expect. The easy part is finding her, along with her younger sister Hazelle and her brother Charles, in the 1900 census, back in Wichita, Kansas, in the household of her parents, George and Myrtle Banfill. There, we learn that Vina was supposedly born in April of 1896.

By 1910, Vina had lost her mother, and her widowed father had moved the remaining family—by now, only Vina and her sister Hazelle—back to Douglass, to the home of his widowed mother, Mary Banfill.

After that point, it becomes challenging to track Vina, mainly because of her several marriages. In 1920, we can find her in the Kistler household, but it is not apparent just whom she has married by that surname until we find a Social Security record for her subsequently deceased son Jack. Then, we learn that her husband's name was George.

Again, in 1930, Vina's changed identity was a challenge. The census reveals she was by then living in Oregon, and married to Earl Hacker. But in the 1940 census, she was in California—in the same county where I live, incidentally—widow of a man named McIntyre. Her daughter Dollie, from her marriage to George Kistler, was now married to Lindsay Douglas and living in the same household.

Where Vina ended up next, I cannot say at this point. I can't find any record of her death—perhaps owing to yet another married name—though I can find a record of her Social Security application, which was the point of this search in the first place.

And it is there that we face another disappointment, if we are hoping for verification that Vina's mother was sister to George Banfill's second wife Clara Alice. On that record, Vina reports that her father's surname was Banfill—which we already knew—but that her mother's name was not Hoover, but Mary Baum.

Baum? Where did that come from?!

Actually, there may be a logical explanation. Remember, Vina and Hazelle were raised, as teenagers before their father's second marriage, by their widowed grandmother. Her given name just happened to be Mary. And while Mary is one of the most common given names for daughters, if we take a step back in George's own family history, we can find an explanation in the census before Vina's birth and even before George's first marriage.

In the 1880 census, George Banfill was still an eight year old boy in his parents household—home of Levi and Mary Banfill. But George's parents didn't live on their own property; they actually lived with his father's in-laws. And their surname actually turns out to be Baum. Could it be that, having been raised by her grandmother, Vina automatically provided her grandmother's maiden name when filling out the Social Security forms? We can't say for sure, but the records sure vindicate us for having such a guess.

Still, that leaves me no wiser about the identity of George's first wife. For now, that may have to suffice us, until more documentation turns up, online. After all, I won't be traveling to Kansas again, any time soon.

In the meantime, though I have no photographs of George's children by his first wife—whoever she actually was—I do have a photo of each of the children of George and Clara Alice Banfill. You'll meet the first of the two, tomorrow.

Another Way to 'Splain It

It sure seemed that it was owing to the matchmaking prowess of a next-door neighbor that the widower George Banfill came to say "I do" to the widow Clara Alice Knapp. But there may be another explanation. I can't quite find all the documentation other researchers seem to intuit in their trees, but I'll lay it out for you to see for yourself.

It's no secret that it's possible to see the work of other family history researchers online, wherever publicly available trees can be posted. In the case of George Banfill and his first wife, there are a couple curious details which some researchers assert—minus any documentation—that you may find interesting.

Bottom line to this curiosity: when George remarried after the death of his first wife, he may have married his sister-in-law. Here's how the story could possibly unfold: George's first wife's maiden name was Hoover. So was Clara Alice's. Clara Alice Hoover's parents were Samuel Hoover and Ellen Frettinger, a domestic servant Samuel met in the Benton County, Indiana, household of George and Caroline Krugh, where Samuel was also employed in 1870.

In that same census year, on November 6, Samuel Hoover and Ellen Frettinger were married in that same county, and went on from that point to have at least five children—according to the several family researchers whose trees I was able to locate. Of those children, we already have met one: Clara Alice Hoover, who married—and later became the widow of—William Malphus Knapp. Her siblings included Ana, Charles, and Ellen Jennie, apparently lost in infancy in the same year that her mother also died.

From the point of those 1879 deaths, I have not able to find any verification or burial information that matched Ellen Frettinger Hoover's previous record from the 1870 census. Neither have I found the widower Samuel and his five children in the 1880 census. Not, in fact, until the 1910 census do I find Samuel again—at the point at which his daughter Clara Alice, herself now a widow, had moved back from Washington with her own children to live with her father in Oklahoma.

There was, however, another daughter of Samuel and Ellen Hoover. Some family trees show her name one way, others report a wildly different take on this daughter's name. While some researchers assert her name was Beda Mamestes Hoover—without providing any verification—others say her name was simply Myrtle. For Myrtle, we have some indications of such a name; witness the possibilities at Wichita, Kansas, where we see Myrtle as the wife in the George Banfill household in the 1900 census, and likewise in the Kansas state census in 1905.

There is, of course, another way to see whether George's first wife was sister to his second wife: look for any records concerning the children of that first marriage. With that method, we have three chances for verification: one for their son Charles, and one for each of their two daughters, Vina and Hazelle.

With Charles, unfortunately, I've struck out. Though I can find records for an uncle, his namesake, I find nothing for the Charles Banfill who was born in December of 1899. Perhaps his family's appearance, sans Charles, in the 1910 census—where we first found them in Douglass, Kansas—is an ominous sign of what became of young Charles Banfill. We won't be finding any clues as to his mother's maiden name in that case.

As for his sister Hazelle, we have the easiest route to finding any record of her mother's identity. Born July 16, 1897, Hazelle Grace Banfill married Homer Crump in Major County, Oklahoma—where the widowed Clara Alice Knapp had been living—on November 5, 1917. By 1930, Hazel and Homer and their only child, eleven year old Homer Walter Crump, were living far from Oklahoma, in Gustine, California, where they remained—at least until the elder Homer Crump's passing on April 28, 1938.

Homer Crump was buried in a cemetery in Modesto, California—in the next county to the north of Gustine—where, by 1950, Hazelle was eventually married to Arthur Rathhaus. A year after his father's death, Homer and Hazelle's son, also named Homer, was married, providing us with documentation that his mother's maiden name was indeed Banfill. His career in the Air Force ended abruptly in a headlines-producing collision of two B52s carrying him and fifteen other crewmen over an airfield in Spokane, Washington, the cause of his untimely 1958 death.

Hazelle lived until 1981, eventually moving from Modesto to the oceanside city of Monterey—or at least the county by the same name. I cannot find her burial information—at least, not yet. But was it a confirmation of her mother's maiden name to discover that the California Death Index gave the answer to that question as Hoover? Or, as is often the case in moments of such stress, did a distant family member give the wrong information? After all, we know for sure that her step-mother's maiden name was Hoover. It could have been an easy mistake to make.

There is, however, one other option: reviewing the records of Hazelle's sister Vina to see if we can find any confirmation of this possibility that their dad's two wives were actually sisters.

The Rest of Her Story: Clara Alice

Perhaps the reason little Myrtle Knapp—the wiggleworm in the photograph from Tuesday's post—used only her middle name was that Clara was both her first name and that of her mother. The matriarch of the William Malphus Knapp family was known as Clara Alice.

The elder Clara was widowed fairly young—she was thirty four at the time—when her husband passed away in 1908. By then, though the family had moved from Kansas to Washington state, they had returned to the midwest, this time to Oklahoma. The widowed Clara Alice Knapp was easily found in that same location in Major County, Oklahoma, by the time of the 1910 census, living with her eight children, along with her father, Samuel Hoover.

Meanwhile, about two hundred miles away, Clara Alice's deceased husband's aunt—thirty one year old Flora Knapp, whose photo we saw yesterday—was by then married to Roy Jones and living in Douglass, Kansas.

The house immediately next door to the Jones' residence was a household with the exact opposite configuration of Clara Alice's situation back in Chester, Oklahoma. This was the home of Mary Banfill, whose widowed son, George, was living with his two teenaged daughters, Vina and Hazel.

While I have yet to find any documentation that Aunt Flora served as a cunning matchmaker, you are welcome to come up with your own guess as to how George Banfill in Kansas met Clara Alice Hoover Knapp in Oklahoma.

It wasn't long after those two 1910 census records were compiled, including the two households separated by nearly two hundred miles, when a couple met at the Major County courthouse in Oklahoma to exchange vows and blend their families. On October 10, 1912, George Banfill and Clara Alice Knapp became husband and wife.

By the time of the next census in 1920, George and Clara Alice had a family comprised of three of her children—Robert, William Milton, and Florence Knapp—plus two children of their own: Harold and Nila Banfill. In the 1920 census, George's two daughters had already moved on, and by the time of the 1930 census—by then, moved back to Douglass, Kansas—the only children remaining in the Banfill household were those George and Clara Alice had in common.

When 1940 arrived, however, the couple had moved far afield of either midwestern state. They now showed up in the Great Valley of California, living next door to their son, Harold, himself a married man with a two year old son of his own. George and Clara Alice apparently remained in that California location for the rest of their lives, for George was buried in the Modesto Pioneer Cemetery in 1947, and Clara Alice followed in 1948.

For those who aren't familiar with this part of California, Modesto is located in Stanislaus County, the county just to the south of the one where I live. Though I found photographs of their families—both the Knapp family and the Banfill family, whom we'll meet next week—up in Sonora, which is a drive away in the foothills, I consider this to be a possible explanation for how pictures of a family from Kansas and Oklahoma might have ended up in California at all.

Best of all, though, I now can say I might have a better idea as to why the Banfills might have held on for so long to the picture of Aunt Flora.

Above: Close-up of Clara Alice Hoover Knapp from a Knapp family photograph taken circa 1898; photograph currently in possession of author until claimed by a direct descendant.

Meet William's Baby Sister

Included in the set of family photographs I rescued from a Sonora, California, antique shop was a smaller grouping that obviously belonged to someone who knew the William Malphus Knapp family. We've already shared William's own portrait, as well as a family photograph with his wife, Clara Alice, and their (at the time) four children. Now, we're going to step back another generation and take a look at a photograph of one of William's siblings—his baby sister Flora.

It was a good thing this photograph was labeled, because not only did it provide a name for the young lady in the portrait, it help me zero in on the right generation in the Knapp family. You see, William Malphus Knapp had a daughter named Florence, a name which often gets shortened to Flora, but thanks to whoever labeled this photo—with that characteristic scrawl right on the face of the picture frame—the details help us to identify the right Knapp generation. This Flora was daughter of a William Knapp, alright, but the label also told us she was "sister of Wm. + Geo. Knapp."

As the younger William Knapp had a son named William—we'll be meeting him soon, as well—but not a son named George, it is the previous generation to which we'll turn to identify this Flora.

Heading back to the Knapp home in 1880 Douglass, Kansas, if you recall, the family was comprised of William Malphus Knapp's parents, William and Corintha, as well as his younger brother George. The couple had apparently lost two other sons during the time they had moved to Michigan. After a gap of about eight years, along came Flora, born in 1878.

Flora apparently remained in or near Douglass for a good portion of her adult life, where we learn through the 1900 census that she had married, in 1897, a man from Illinois nearly eight years her senior, named Edward Roy Jones.

Despite having married in 1897, though, by the time of the census three years later, Flora and her husband were childless, as they were, also, at the time of the 1910 census. At that point, the only other person in the Jones household was a boarder, Helen Clifford, who worked in Flora's millinery shop.

Before the point of the 1920 census, though, Flora and Roy had news: they had welcomed in a daughter, now three years of age and born in Florida, whom they named Mildred. By the time of that 1920 census, Roy was forty seven and Flora was forty one. They were by then living in Wichita, not far from their old home in Douglass—certainly much closer than wherever their daughter was born in Florida.

The couple may have returned to Douglass after that point, but it is hard for me to tell, as I can't yet locate their record in the 1930 census. By 1933, however, Edward Roy Jones had passed away, and though his wife outlived him by another two decades, they were both buried back in Douglass, Kansas. By the time of the 1940 census, the widowed Flora was living in Wichita in her by-then married daughter's household, along with two young grandsons.

What is encouraging to me is to find a few family trees posted in Ancestry.com which relate specifically to Flora's daughter's family. Perhaps that is a good sign; Flora's photo may make its way back home soon. What may complicate that possibility, though, is that some of those direct descendants haven't checked back to update their tree in over a year. If I send a message via their Ancestry account, they may or may not respond.

We'll just have to wait and see—for Flora's photo as well as several others. Perhaps this is just how things go in the avocational genealogy research world. While Life happens, sometimes family history has to wait.

Above: Photograph taken in Douglass, Kansas, of a young Flora Knapp, baby sister of William and George Knapp; photograph currently in possession of author until claimed by a direct descendant.



  

A Knapp Family Collection

Sometimes, the photographs I find at Gold Rush Country antique shops don't come from far away. Sometimes, they come from down the street.

After having located photographs coming from as far away as Poland, Germany, and Montreal in Canada, that's what turned out to be the case for the last set of family photos we've been reviewing. All those Brockman and Purkey family photos I've been sharing these past few months were likely recent possessions of a Brockman descendant who settled in northern California for those golden retirement years.

The same thing is likely happening now, as we move from the many photos connected to that Sonora, California, estate to a collection of pictures from what I believe is a totally unrelated family. Many of the photos in this set were well marked—albeit irritatingly on the face of the picture, rather than more discreetly entered on the reverse. The photos also had one other distinguishing mark: they were each stored in a clear plastic container, sealed with tape—likely of the type that would make a proper archivist cringe. As much as I believe in the sanctity of provenance, I couldn't shake the compulsion to gingerly remove the photos from their encasement, so—confession time, here—they are freed, at last.

Now, to get down to the business of researching just who these people were so we can see their likenesses sent home to family. We'll begin with a little overview of the patriarch of the family, a man named William Malphus Knapp.

"Malfus," as it turns out, is an important middle name to keep in mind. As this William was named after his father—also a William, though his middle name was different—the two were differentiated by the use of the younger William's middle name. And that, as we see through various spelling permutations such as the example in the 1880 census, is how we can find him when an abundance of hits for a name as common as William Knapp overwhelms us.

Though I was able to locate "Malphis" as a young teenager in his parents' household in Douglass, Kansas—making him one of 369 inhabitants of a city whose founding occurred after young William's own 1867 birth—don't think he remained a resident of rural Butler County for long. Perhaps because his father was a carpenter, and thus of an occupation enabling the family to travel to find work, or perhaps because of his family's history—his father was born in Ohio to Canadian parents—William, too, eventually moved on.

That twenty year gap from the 1880 census to the next available United States enumeration has been bemoaned by many researchers, and with this next step in the younger William's chronology, I add my voice, once again, to this chorus. Still, we can read the tea leaves in the murky recording of the 1900 census, and realize that, after his birth in either Indiana or Michigan (each census gives a different response), his path led him to marry an Illinois gal who had moved to Butler County some time before the 1885 state census.

According to the 1900 census, William married Clara Alice Hoover around 1891, and they welcomed the first of their many children, Richard Samuel, in November, 1892. From that date through the 1897 arrival of their daughter Corintha—named after William's by then long-deceased mother—the family remained in Kansas. With the addition of their son Charles, as we can see from the enumeration itself, the Knapp family was now resident in Klickitat County in southern Washington State.

If William Malphus Knapp had remained in Washington, I might have considered my acquisition of his abandoned family photos as just another case of a collection sent, over the years, to a relative in nearby California. In this case, however, I think it is a bit more convoluted than that simple conclusion. You see, not much after that 1900 census, William returned to the midwest, where he died in Oklahoma in 1908. By the time of the 1910 census, his widow and children remained in Major County, living with Clara's father, Samuel Hoover.

If William and Clara Knapp ended up in Oklahoma, though, what was the connection that brought all those Knapp family photographs to a home near Sonora, California, location of the antique shop where I found them? It's in the subsequent generations where I think the answer lies. Before we get to that point, though, let's meet the rest of the family, which will be easily accomplished, thanks to the information provided on each picture.

Whoever kept that set of Knapp family photos was someone intent on remembering exactly who they were, for each one came with a thorough label. For today, we'll begin with the picture of William Malphus Knapp, himself, and tomorrow, I'll begin introducing the rest of his family to you.

Above: Photograph labeled "William Malfus Knapp, born May 8, 1867 at Chesterton, Porter Co. Indiana, died April 20, 1904 at Chester, Major Co., Okla." Photograph with written entry as found at antique store in Sonora, California. Photograph currently in possession of author until claimed by a direct descendant.

Baby Fay

My attention has been kidnapped lately by a hundred-year-old postcard addressed to a Mrs. Henry Keefe in Red House, Nevada. Other than the space dedicated to inscribing that simple three line address, the entire card was crammed with details about the charming baby whose photograph was featured on the reverse of the Azo postcard.

It's true that I've given up on my previous pursuit, trying to find a descendant for the last series of photo postcards I had worked on—well, given up for the time being, at least. Hopefully, someone will eventually answer my emailed pleas and connect me with a likely prospect. For now, we need to set aside the five photographs from the Barnes family of Kansas, and see what else can be found in the collection of abandoned photographs I found in that antique shop in the foothills of northern California. I really want to send another one home.

With this old postcard, the one addressed to Mrs. Keefe, it was meant to go to a place so tiny, it isn't really even an official location on the map. Lately, Red House is categorized—at least in some places—as a "census designated place" in Humboldt County, Nevada. If you aren't familiar with that county, I'm not surprised; the only city the place contains is Winnemucca, the county seat.

But I'm not so sure the postcard ever got mailed. For one thing, it didn't look like it had suffered a run through the mail system, though perhaps it was sent, enclosed inside an envelope. However, if it did actually get mailed, I'm not sure how it would have arrived at its intended destination; looking at the closest census year (1920), it doesn't appear that there was anyone by that name living anywhere in Humboldt County, Nevada—Red House or elsewhere. Not even in the thriving metropolis of Winnemucca. 

Above: Address written on the reverse of a hundred-year-old Azo photo postcard; photograph currently in possession of the author.

Faded From Memory

While I've been struggling to identify the members of Alta Barnes' grandparents' generation—in hopes of identifying just who those tall cousins were flanking Alta's mom, Clara, on that fifth orphaned photograph I found in northern California—I've been stalling for a second reason: the photograph itself is too faded to see well.

All that tap dancing around Clara's parents' family trees have been of no use. It made more sense to me that Clara would be standing with cousins from her mother's side of the family, but no one else on Harriet Hagar's side of the family had children—at least that I could tell.

Harriet's siblings—Lucy, Henry, and Charity—weren't that easy to trace, themselves. I could find the oldest three children as part of the Hagar family in Kansas as recently as the state's 1865 census, taken in June of that year. The baby of the family, Charity, arrived that September, thus missing the official record by a matter of only a few months.

September likely was the last anyone would see of Charity's mom—also named Charity—and I suspect she died during or right after the baby was born. The reason I suspect that is because, after that point, I can find the other children scattered about in other homes, but not with their parents. Their brother Henry—at least if I have the right one—was listed in a family by a different surname until joining his by-then-married oldest sister, Harriet, in the Tousley home in time for the 1880 census. Likewise for baby Charity.

Lucy, on the other hand, seemed to have disappeared entirely—perhaps succumbing to an illness which might also have taken her mom, or by marrying and forever disguising her maiden name so thoroughly as to never be found again. Who knows? Perhaps in her married years, she was the source of the mysterious cousins, though I doubt it at this point.

Youngest sibling Charity also couldn't have been the source of the unnamed cousins, as we've already discovered in pursuing the events in her life through the local newspaper reports.

Yet someone apparently knew who those mystery cousins were, for the faded photograph—though undated, possibly taken as early as 1893, the year of Harriet's death—was lugged all the way from the family's Kansas home to some place in the foothills of northern California. Faded from view as well as from memory, the portrait of four women and two men reveals some details of the clothing, but only the barest of outlines of facial features.

What I was hoping for was that our photo manipulation program would help clear up the scan, at least enough to make out the facial details. Unfortunately, though the program in past versions would do that, it no longer includes that easy fix. With thanks to my daughter for her best effort, we can catch a glimpse of what these folks once looked like, but only the faintest glimpse.

For what it's worth, I'll post it here anyhow. The photo manipulation did bring out some interesting details no longer visible in the original. If nothing else, it's a visceral reminder of how easily our memories can fade from view—sometimes, even with our constant effort to revive and restore those life moments we've tried to capture for future generations.

Above: Undated photograph from the studio of J. L. Cusick in Arkansas City, Kansas, with a handwritten label on the reverse: "Clara Tousley, girl standing between two cousins." Photograph currently in the possession of the author.