A Regular Nose

 

Sometimes, it just pays to look more closely at those hundred-year-old documents we peruse for family history purposes. If nothing else, that can be worth a smile, if not a chuckle.

When I closed out last month's research project on my mother-in-law's matriline, the chase led me to several unexpected people—son of a president, and a prince of pre-revolutionary Russia, for instance, each married to women sharing the same matriline as my mother-in-law.

With such international connections, of course there would be passports to be applied for. And, from our perspective as family historians, we know that passports can provide useful genealogical information.

I took a close look at one application, dated in 1870 for Laura Virginia Carr, by then wife of Chicago businessman Benjamin Lockwood Honoré. Her niece's husband, Chicago investor Potter Palmer, had signed to vouch for Laura on her application.

Since this was an application pre-dating the widespread use of photographs for such documentation, the paperwork included a verbal description of Laura's appearance. From that record, we learn that Laura had a high forehead, a sharp chin, a small mouth, and a regular nose.

A regular nose? What is that supposed to mean?

I thought that was an unusual way to describe any feature of a person's face, so I took a look at the applications for the rest of this traveling family. Laura's niece Bertha, wife of Potter Palmer, had a nose that was said to have been "straight." Though completing her application over a decade after Bertha's, her sister Ida—by then, wife of the president's son—had the same description: a "straight" nose. Likewise for Ida's daughter Julia, completing her application in preparation for her life as the wife of a Russian prince: "straight" nose.

Perhaps, back in 1870 when Laura Honoré completed her paperwork to travel abroad, the science of facial descriptions had not been so finely tuned. After all, it can take a thousand words to add up to one picture—and pictures were what those passport applications were lacking.

Isn't that just like the challenge we face when we look at any other dated document describing our ancestors' lives? We read papers filled with words carrying hundred-year-old baggage, terms that could have meant something entirely different to those who lived during that era than they would to us today. We are consigned to rely on reports of what eyes spotted back then, but which say nothing of the questions we would have asked of the same people today.

Somehow, with all those restrictions, our task is to recreate a picture of those ancestors, doing far more than merely counting those "regular" noses. Overcoming the nondescript terms we have to work with, our goal is to craft a family narrative based on those mundane facts that can not only speak to us, but can resonate with the future generations to whom we hope to pass along our message.

Above: Description of physical appearance of U. S. Passport applicant Laura Honoré, part of her passport application which was filed August 5, 1870, in New York City; image courtesy Ancestry.com.

Just Off the Boat

Discovering the real first name of Penrose Hawkes—the man whose photographs were included in a forsaken family photo album I found in an antique shop in northern California—helped lead to other discoveries. Penrose, after all, was a middle name; proper searches for documents to serve as evidence are generally conducted using first names. Thus, finding the true full name led to more discoveries about this John Pim Penrose Hawkes.

A great find was a copy of Penrose's application for a U.S. passport. This, as it turned out, filled in many of the blanks that had us wondering how this Irish-born young man had ended up, alone, in the relatively rural setting of upstate New York by the time he turned sixteen.

When Penrose applied for his U.S. passport, he had been in the country for almost seven years. He had already managed to become a naturalized citizen at the age of twenty three, barely two weeks before making this application.

Apparently, the reason for his passport request was to return home to visit family during the summer of 1923. While it must have been a long-anticipated return for both adventuring son and his parents, it certainly also provided a welcome record for those of us wanting to know more about him nearly ninety five years later.

If all the declarations made for this document were correct, they provide much for us to learn about Penrose's early days—details genealogists thrive on discovering.

From this document, we learn that Penrose was born March 22, 1900, in the town of Bandon in County Cork, Ireland. That location had been established in Ireland by English settlers in the early 1600s and subsequently mired by a longstanding history once granting residence solely to fellow Protestants. As we'll soon see, ancestors of the Hawkes family had been among those early British settlers in Ireland.

Penrose's passport application revealed that his was the exact same name as his father's—John Pim Penrose Hawkes—and that his father, too, had been born in County Cork.

Since the passport application indicated that the younger Penrose had emigrated in June, 1916, perhaps his father, with full apprehension of then-current events, had considered the risk of what was yet to come in Ireland and wanted to send his only son safely beyond any threat to his welfare. After all, it barely had been two months since the ominous occurrence of the Easter Rising. By June of that same year, son Penrose was safely in Liverpool, England, preparing to sail for America.

Soon after, the sixteen year old Penrose had arrived in New York harbor and made his way northward to the city of Corning—a small town, then, of almost fifteen thousand residents, whose population is much the same today as it was in 1900 when Penrose was born. What drew Penrose to that location was a key member of the extended Hawkes family, a relative who had lived there—and thrived, apparently—for the past fifty years or more.

While statements may be found indicating that the specific reason Penrose went to Corning was at the bidding of his aging relative, taking in the broader picture of the history of Ireland at the time of his departure—especially considering his young age at the time—leads me to wonder whether there was an alternate impetus from across the ocean urging his departure from his homeland. Corning, then, became Penrose's safe haven during the storms about to overtake Ireland.

Above: Main Street in Bandon, County Cork, much as it appeared when Penrose Hawkes was born there in 1900; photograph courtesy The Lawrence Photograph Collection at the National Library of Ireland via Wikipedia; in the public domain. 

A Home for Mary

A genealogist may seek out details on a couple's descendants in order to trace the line through further generations for specific reasons. In the case of the missionaries to India, Peachy T. and Mary Whitcomb Wilson, I needed to research descendants from two generations for one reason: I needed to find where the motherless Wilson children were raised.

Upon Mary Whitcomb Wilson's death, back in the United States in 1874, the Reverend Wilson had seen fit to return to India. There was only one complication: what to do with the children. With his wife gone, someone else would need to care for these young ones. Perhaps India was not, after all, the best place to raise them. According to reports, their father decided to find homes for them in America before returning, alone, to India.

The most logical place to find these children—at least, that's what I thought—would be with family members. That's why I was elated to find listings of Mary Whitcomb's siblings in the White genealogy I mentioned the other day. On the same page as her own entry, there were sections for each of Mary Whitcomb's two surviving sisters. I checked them carefully for possibilities that they might have taken in the Wilson children.

No such luck. As it turned out, one of the two married sisters—Nancy—had died within the very month in which she had married James M. Robbins. No chance she would turn out to be the doting aunt, having passed in 1866, long before the Wilson children had even returned home.

The other sister, Ellen, didn't marry until she was in her late forties. Besides, the year of her marriage—1889—was much too late to make a suitable household arrangement for the Wilson children, either.

I was gearing up to do a thorough search among Peachy's six brothers, to see who might have taken his children in, when I stumbled upon that hint of his daughter's subsequent marriage to someone named Gill. It wasn't long after I began googling for a Mary Wilson Gill that I came across one detail that seemed sure to be just the hint I was seeking.

The document was Mary's 1917 application for a passport. Just like her father after the death of his spouse, the widowed Mrs. Mary Gill was intent upon returning to India, and was set to sail in November or December of that same year.

I knew I had the right passport application, for she identified herself as daughter of Peachy T. Wilson, who was born in Christian County, Kentucky—which he was. She then further identified herself as widow of Joseph H. Gill, and explained the timeline of his emigration from County Tyrone in Ireland to school in Evanston, Illinois, via New York City—including date and location of his naturalization formalities.

In addition, she identified her "permanent residence" in the United States: a town in Illinois called Pekin (which in later missionary reports was rendered as "Peking," causing some confusion). Even better, additional pages of the application provided statements in support of her birth information by people who knew her since childhood—a type of delayed birth report, as evidently she had no documentation from the time of her birth in India.

One statement, by a man named Walter T. Smith—oh, Smith...did it have to be Smith?!—affirmed that he knew "the above named Mary Wilson Gill personally for forty years." I did a little quick math on that one, arriving at a date in 1877, only three years after Mary's mother had died. Conceding that might be close enough, I noticed that Mr. Smith's residence also happened to be in Pekin, Illinois.

Even better than that was the statement given on the subsequent page, by a Caroline Pieper Smith,

This is to certify that Mary Wilson Gill lived with me from June 1874 to February 1891 and that her father Rev. Peachy T. Wilson informed me that Mary Wilson Gill was born on July 10th 1865 at Rae Bareilly U.P. India.

What more could I ask? This must have been the couple who took in the Wilson children! How plain it all seemed, now. All I had to do was search for the 1880 census—the only possible year in which Mary would show in the enumeration in that household—and I would have the proof to back up this statement.

Well...it wasn't so easy. For one thing, there wasn't any Mary Wilson in Pekin, Illinois, in 1880—at least, not one who was born in 1865 in India. As for husband and wife, Walter and Caroline Smith, there wasn't one of those couples, either.

What I did find, however, will suffice me—I hope. Sure enough, in Pekin, there was a Smith household in the 1880 census which contained a Walter and a Caroline, but Walter turned out to be the fifteen year old son of Caroline and her husband, D. C. (don't you hate those initials?) Smith.

The significant detail about that particular Smith household was not only the lack of anyone with a surname Wilson, but the listing of the rest of the children. After their oldest son Walter, the rest of the children were named, in order: daughter Mary, son Earnest, daughter Mary, son Dedrick, daughter Carry, son Austin.

Yes, you read that right: two daughters named Mary.

What was interesting about that older Mary—whose age was given as fourteen in this enumeration—was that, unlike all her "siblings" whose place of birth was in Illinois, hers was listed as something that looked like "Hindostin." And unlike the pattern of parents' birthplace listings for all the other children—father from Hanover, mother from Illinois—this Mary's father was from "Ketucky" and there was no entry for mother's place of birth.

I don't know about you, but I'd buy that as evidence of Mary's childhood home.

With no sign of her brothers, though, we'll have to look elsewhere for clues as to what became of them. Since it seems Mary's surrogate parents were not close relatives, the possibilities on this next search could be endless.


Above: Images from the 1880 United States census for Tazewell County, Illinois, courtesy Ancestry.com.

Breathe: That Collective Sigh of Relief

It’s the beginning of another month—the kind of time which brings to the mailboxes of many Americans more disappointments than joys. Some are disappointed with what arrives in their mailbox: bills that can’t be paid. Some are unhappy with what doesn’t arrive in their mail: the check on which they are so dependent.

Me? I was just happy to enjoy a sunshiny break from the rain—though I’m grateful we’re having so much of it, finally!—to get outside in the cool afternoon air and walk down the driveway to check my box. I didn’t even know whether the mail had been delivered yet; I just needed to get outdoors. Sometimes, I sit at my desk so long, you’d think I was anchored there with a real ball and chain.

Well, the walk was worth the trip in more ways than one.

It happened later than I originally guessed, but sooner than I ultimately presumed. That “expedited” government document—the one so desperately needed now, to fill in the last blank on an application due soon for a foreign study program—finally arrived.

I had been pondering creating an online contest—“guess which late date the passport arrives”—since every shred of rational expectation had seemingly been exchanged for Kafka-esque mishaps. Even when you feel like screaming and fuming, sometimes it really is better to sit back, relax, and have a good long laugh at the situation. What else can you do?

Next breath-suspension exercise: the long wait to receive the response to the application for study abroad. Here’s hoping the decision comes back with a “yes” for Ireland!

You’re Not Gonna Believe This…

Hmmm…let me start that another way.

“Guess what just happened?!”

No…no. That isn’t quite the way to say it. Try this again.

“News Flash: Regular Passport Renewals Arrive Faster Than Expedited Applications for New Passports.”

Yep. That just about says it all. Don’t waste your money on expediting your passport application. Someone at the U.S. Department of State will go over that application with a magnifying glass, looking for any burp, hiccup, or stray hair that is not up to standards. After all, what’s the big hurry?

Those other applications? The ones that contained photographs taken at the same time and place as the expedited application’s photograph—the one that got rejected? They sailed right through that other bureaucrat’s in-box and out the door after a cursory moment for processing. We received them in yesterday's mail.

Maybe Walgreens got it wrong. And maybe they didn’t.

Maybe some civil servant was just having a bad hair day. Or got up on the wrong side of the bed.

Whatever the case, the “expedited” passport application—the one that cost significantly more money—is still being held hostage somewhere in the vast bureaucratic maze at the State Department.

In the meantime, someone’s application for study abroad is put on hold until that magic passport number arrives from said State Department and can be affixed to its proper place by an anxious college student.


Above: photograph of United States passport cover, courtesy Wikipedia.

Paved With Good Intentions

The journey from our house to Ireland has not turned out to enjoy as auspicious a start as we had hoped. A couple weeks ago, during our daughter’s spring break from college classes, she went down to the courthouse to begin the passport process. Since my husband and I needed to renew our own passports, we used the prodding to tag along.

Each of us had to first obtain a photo suitable for the many government requirements for such things.

We went to just the place designed to handle lots of such requests: our corner Walgreens. The friendly Walgreens guy took us through the process. First, he snapped our individual pictures. Then, he took the digital version and manipulated it just so—there was a handy-dandy computerized template to shrink our heads down to the right size to fit into a superimposed grid. Then, he flicked the contrast dial until he sucked all the color out of the background—and much of it out of our faces—then clicked “save” and slapped it into the photo processor.

In less than ten minutes, we were out the door with our uniformly-sized head shots in hand.

We had been advised by the college department that handles such matters that if we wished to avoid impossibly long lines, we should show up at the courthouse first thing. Being the perennially-late creatures that we are, we arrived at our downtown location twenty minutes after eight.

For those of you sympathetic to my cause, that is eight in the morning.

We apparently made it through the metal detectors in the entry way in record time, caught an elevator up to the third floor, followed the signs to a propped-open door, stepped inside the appropriate office and all the way up to the counter.

There was no line. How could this be? The office looked set up for a line out the door, but no one was in sight.

We had each of our applications processed quickly. We opted to pay to expedite our daughter’s application, not only because it was an initial application, but because it will be the one detail missing from an otherwise already completed application for her study-abroad site.

You see, the foreign studies consortium through which her university arranges such opportunities offers these many venues from around the world with one caveat: the assignments are doled out in something resembling a lottery.

You give them your first choice for where you wish to study abroad.

Then you give them a second choice.

And then a third.

Maybe you’ll get your wish, and go to your first choice. Maybe not.

The problem for our daughter is that she only has one choice: Ireland. Her special major studies in anthropology and archaeology come with a specific focus: Ireland. It would be quite the challenge if she were to have to complete her studies in Irish archaeology in, say, Brazil. Or Swaziland. It does not take a rocket scientist to deduce that there is only one place for her to complete this goal: Ireland.

And yet, there at the top of the application—which, of course, must be completed in its entirety to be accepted—is a square in which she must insert her passport number.

Right. The passport she has yet to receive.

No passport number, no application submitted. Hence the payment to expedite.

You can imagine our consternation when, in an email received not more than a few days ago, our daughter was informed that the “contrast” on her passport photo was unacceptable and that she would have to re-do her photograph and resubmit it before the passport application process could be completed.

When you are faced with a situation like that, you can go back to the store where the defective goods were obtained and complain, get your money back, vent your spleen, or whatever gives you satisfaction—but that still doesn’t guarantee that the same mistake won’t be made yet again. The complaining, the pursuit of refund will have to wait. This time, the job has to be done right.

No time to lose, our undaunted Irish-bound exchange student sprinted over to a different shop—one which a college friend had used without any such unfortunate results—obtained a second passport photo, and followed the explicit governmental-ese instructions to the “t” to re-submit it.

Meanwhile, the “expedite” we had paid for is becoming less expedited than we had originally planned. I don’t think we can heave a collective sigh of relief until the actual passport is safely in hand, and its unique individual identifier copied dutifully onto the college application requesting that her destination be—oh please, oh please—indeed, Ireland.

I’m sure Walgreens meant well. I’m sure the government worker inspecting the passport application meant well, too. I guess we’ll see whether this was a case of over-zealous bureaucrat if our own passport renewal requests hit the same bump in the road. Whatever the case, I just hope that bump happens in the road that’s still going to Ireland.

Lost Amidst The Unnamed Faces

What could be better for a family history researcher than to inherit scads and scads of family photographs?

What could be worse for a family historian than to discover that none of those photographs are labeled?

I’ve been seeking every way I know to figure out that one near branch of the more recent descendants of my Davis line—the one descending from my maternal grandfather’s oldest sister, Lummie Davis Moore. While I’ve done my due diligence to locate records online—and while, sadly, I don’t have the liberty to travel to Tennessee, Maryland, and most definitely not to Honduras to do hands-on research—I haven’t found what I’ve been seeking.

Meanwhile, thoughts of that family keep spiraling through my mind like some hypnotic computer screen saver from the nineties. Every unlabeled photograph from my aunt’s collection makes me jump to the conclusion that it must be them.

One of the few recollections passed down to me of my mother’s aunt Lummie was that she and her sister, Mabel, were tall women. If I could believe my family, they’d have me know the sisters were each six feet tall—quite a striking appearance back in their day, just after the turn of the century, when these women would have come of age.

As it turns out, I did find one document that served to set that family tradition aside: Lummie’s passport application in 1922. On the second page, the “Description of Applicant” plainly revealed her height to be five feet nine inches.

Close. But not exactly six feet. Perhaps, when I get to that point, I will discover her sister Mabel also wasn’t as towering a giant as family legend held her to be.

Whether truth or tall tale, I still can’t help myself, though, when it comes to these blank backings to family photographs. If only they contained labels. Every time I see a family picture of a tall, slender woman, I wonder if it might be Lummie. Or her sister. But I’ll likely never know.

Take this old picture—a little slip of a thing measuring just over two inches square. Faded now to a lighter shade of brown, it did brighten up a bit when I used a little Photoshop magic on it. Thankfully.

While the background of the composition offers no clues—not even a recognizable detail which could serve to provide some scale—my mind immediately jumps to the conclusion that this must be my missing relative, Lummie Davis Moore. Surely it is. Look how tall and slender the young woman looks. I’m convinced it is Lummie, so starved am I for search results. I struggle to rein in my racing imagination.

My mind fights back and tries to reason with me. “See,” I tell myself, “She has dark hair, just like the passport application indicated. And her face looks to be an oval. Doesn’t it seem to match the one included with the passport application?” (If you are an Ancestry.com subscriber, you can take a look through Lummie’s passport pages here, and see what you think about the comparison.)

Then I look again at the photograph in my hand, and wonder who the young man is, standing so close to her. At first, I presume it is her husband, Wallace Moore. But then, something about the eyes, the forehead and the unmistakable ears reminds me of my own grandfather, Lummie’s baby brother. I’ve never seen a picture of him in his younger days. Could this be him?

I’d really like to know. Just thinking that makes me resent the unfairness of being deprived of anyone who could fill in the blanks for me! But it is what it is, and I have to relinquish these flights of fancy and unreasonable conclusions and get back to reality: it’s a photograph of someone. Standing next to someone else. Who each one is, I’ll likely never know.

Unless some distant cousin comes to my rescue. That I would always welcome.