Intimations

 

When pieces are missing from the documentation of your family's story, then what? We learn to read between the lines.

I'm struggling with connecting the dots between my third great-grandmother in Florida, Delaney Townsend Charles, and her Townsend roots back in South Carolina. There are plenty of assertions that her parents were John and Keziah Hays Townsend of Marlboro County, but there are scant references to any paper trail which would confirm such statements.

Still, given what we've got—right now, I'm reading between the typewritten lines of Annie Florence Kinney's D.A.R. membership application, which inexplicably details Delaney's tangential line to her own Kinney lineage—there may be some stray comments which prove helpful.

The main research issues are lack of any death record, probate record, or other final words on the death of Delaney or her husband, Andrew J. Charles, and lack of much of the same for Delaney's supposed father. We can find Delaney and Andrew and their children in the 1850 census, living in Madison County in northern Florida. By 1860, all we can find are their children—living in someone else's household.

That household, as we've already seen, was headed by the second husband of Andrew Charles' sister Drucilla, so theoretically, there should be some documentation specifying the guardianship arrangement that surely was established. But without documentation, we are only guessing.

The assumption is easy to make that some great misfortune befell the couple, causing their death and leaving their children orphaned. Although that leaves us a wide gap of time for our conjecture—anywhere from the date the 1850 census was taken to just before any mortality schedule would be drawn up for the 1860 census—the diligent approach would be to scour any available records, not only in the location of their 1850 residence, but including the counties lying between Madison and the home of their children's guardian in 1860.

In the meantime, there are some aspects of usefulness to the quandary of re-reading and re-reading the same sorry details we've already collected. Take, for instance, this passage, gleaned first from a website featuring the Townsend genealogy and then from the source document referenced in that website, a copy of Annie Florence Kinney's D.A.R. application (note brackets indicate handwritten correction entered in the original application):

After the death of Andrew Jackson Charles, Mr. Light Townsend ([grand]father of John R. of Blenheim) went to Fla. and brought his two nieces back to Marlboro County with him and reared them in his home.

In providing this explanation, applicant Annie Florence Kinney provides us a clue as to what became of my second great-grandmother's parents. It's a small clue, of course, but it helps paint a scenario of how events unfolded.

Note the narrative states, "After the death of Andrew," not "after the death of Andrew and Delaney." The text is intimating that Delaney died before her husband—possibly from causes unrelated to Andrew's own death. Continuing this examination further, as there seems to be confusion over how many sons Delaney had, this scenario might have intimated that Delaney could have died following childbirth, possibly of that second, unexplained son mentioned in the same D.A.R. application.

Of course, nothing explains—yet—just why the death of the second parent prompted the relatives of the first parent to come claim the children. Nor does that help us understand why those relatives, living a greater distance from the Charles children, superseded the guardianship claims of the nearby relatives, who also lived in northern Florida.

Another clue to help pinpoint a timeline of these unfortunate events might be that Andrew Charles' sister—Drucilla, the one who, after her second marriage, did take in the Charles orphans—could have been otherwise occupied with her own tragedy at the time of Andrew's death. Drucilla's last daughter with her first husband was born in January of 1858, and her next child, with the second husband, was born in April of 1860, hinting at the possibility that she would not be in a position to take in three additional relatives any time around 1857 until the time of their actual arrival before June 22, 1860.

Still, dissecting the wording on a D.A.R. application only fuels our conjectures about what did actually happen. To know for sure, we'd need to see documentation—the very thing we are now lacking. Though a solidly constructed proof argument can work wonders, that only stands if we can weave a web of reasoning with enough indisputable data points to connect the dots logically. At this point, those dots are too few and far between to draw up the argument that the patriot John Townsend was Delaney's father.

Reflections on Family Discoveries

 

When we begin our family history journey, we seldom expect to stumble upon deep, dark secrets—let alone unspeakable tragedy. But that doesn't guarantee we will never find it. The pathos of discovering the fate of distant Polish relative, Father Edward Gramlewicz, leaves me pondering the deeper, more meaningful moments in our ancestors' lives.

Finding such vignettes, of course, depends on such personal histories being there in the first place, but it also requires that we mount a search thorough enough to discover what was there to find. And such details will seldom be found, even by the most diligent researcher, unless someone has taken the time to record not only the passage of such events, but the thoughts our ancestors held of having experienced such situations.

For some of our ancestors, we owe a debt of gratitude for the newspapers which catalogued the events in our predecessors' lives—even if the reporters bumbled the spelling or other minor details. At least a record was left to be discovered by the curious among our ancestors' descendants.

For others in our family—usually the unobtrusive, the average, or the downright boring—such research clues may not even be there to be found. In other cases, significant flashes of generosity may only have been captured in history's footnotes—I think here about the footnote in a history journal which, found only by the grace of a search engine's thoroughness, gave me the slightest hint about the man I was researching (and will revisit again, soon), King Stockton.

Yet another set of the ancestors we seek may have been fortunate to have descendants diligent enough to preserve their writings—the letters, journals, diaries in which they recorded their feelings about passing through trying times in history. I think, in that case, of the various members linked to my Broyles line in South Carolina, for whom mentions in such preserved private communications, now shared publicly, enable me to better understand the difficult times in which they lived.

While seeking solid data on the full names, complete dates of significant life markers, or precise locations in which those events occurred may be part and parcel of the genealogical pursuit, I've always sought more. I want to learn what my ancestors were thinking while enduring the experiences in life which befell them. Yes, discovering that Father Edward Gramlewicz suffered an unjust end is a sobering revelation, but understanding what led to that final event grounds the micro-history of my personal family line in the macro-history of world events. That has always been what I've sought in researching family history.

In the coming days, I'll revisit this year's Twelve Most Wanted ancestors to reflect on research progress, and analyze what can be done differently for next year. Then, beginning the day following Christmas and continuing for twelve days, we'll start the whole process over again, selecting twelve new focal points for the upcoming year. I hope you'll consider joining me in the process.  

 

Always, Always, Always: Read the Document

 

It wouldn't be possible—if you know me, you will realize this—for me to wind my way through such a rabbit-trail-laced research project as this saga of the Zegarska sisters, and not stumble across at least one beguiling detail. The one I want to talk about today, as our story winds to a close, is a powerful reminder that if you wish to find a family history story, you must always—and I repeat, always—look at every document you find about those ancestors.

Let's rewind to the beginning of this saga. It was the appearance of one single DNA match, then a few more, then several from multiple family lines, which pointed me to the possibility that my mystery grandfather's mother—a woman whose name I was told had been Anna Zegars—might actually have been born Anastasia Zegarska.

I've spent the better part of a year—and an especially focused month—of intense research both in American and Polish databases to compile what appears to be a reasonable argument concerning that identity. The last of those DNA matches, however, led me to a different line in this same family constellation: not to the descendants of one of the Zegarskis, but directly to what may have been their mother's sister (or at least a cousin). 

As I do with all my DNA matches, I fill in the branches of the family tree with all collateral lines. Working on the descendants of this Anna Wojtaś linked to that last DNA match, I finally came to the youngest of her children, one of the three Krzewinski brothers who emigrated from Poland to America. Andrew—or Andrzej, the name he left behind when he left his home in Czarnylas—was only nineteen when he arrived in Milwaukee, and he waited another ten years before marrying another Polish immigrant, Monika.

What I hadn't mentioned, while writing about those three Krzewinski brothers, was that Andrew's story of married life had its own pathos. Yet, I wouldn't have spotted it, if I hadn't opened up a file at Ancestry.com and actually looked at all the details it contained.

Thanks to those ubiquitous "shaky leaf" hints at Ancestry, I found—and opened up—a document which was supposed to show the death record for Andrew's wife, Monika. One glance at the heading, though, and I realized it wasn't just something about Monika. The header said, "Certificate of Death," sure enough, but the line after "full name of deceased" wasn't Monika. It read, "Child of Andrew Kzenski."

Perhaps genealogists are a heartless lot. When I realized what I was seeing—besides wondering if that were just a misspelling of Andrew's surname rather than a document for the wrong family—I scrolled down the readout only to see what the child's name might have been, and whether I had already accounted for that child in the family group record. It wasn't until I reached the bottom of the page that I was able to recoup my humanity.

It was an unnamed daughter for whom the document had been drawn up. She was born—and died—on April 20, 1902. The primary cause of death was listed as "death of mother before delivery."

That, of course, interjected yet another question as my eyes silently scanned the rest of the page: what had happened to the mother? Almost as if to answer my unspoken question, and yet in a way, not answer it at all, line #25 inquired, "Other important facts not above stated," and the response followed: "one of triplets."

The scenario painted—a frantic attempt in the Milwaukee household at 746 Second Avenue to save at least the newborn children, if not their mother—was sadly broadcasted not only in the local newspaper, but picked up by wire services and reprinted in newspapers across Wisconsin, throughout neighboring states, and even as far away as Arkansas and Mississippi. The three children were buried with their twenty five year old mother in a single grave at Saint Adalbert's Cemetery a few days later.

While it was only a matter of a few lines in a document, the story hidden between those lines would most certainly have been lost to me, but for one well-entrenched research habit: always, always, always read the document. 

Don't just accept a website's offer of a "hint" and blindly plug it into your database. Make the commitment to inspect the whole document, not just the "punch line" of names, dates, and locations. Include all the other lines of the document—lines which most certainly would not have been included in the typical indexing project at genealogical websites. If there's ever a story to tell about your ancestors, that's where you are most likely to uncover the opening lines.

Above: Excerpt from unidentified Milwaukee newspaper clipping regarding Monika Blynska Krzewinski shared online by an Ancestry.com subscriber.

  

A Little Grumbling About Spelling

Finding that Isaac Brown's wife's maiden name was Rinehart certainly piqued my interest. After all, not only was I searching for a reason why his name might show up in the wills of both my mother-in-law's Gordon ancestors and her Rinehart roots as well, but I am still trying to figure out just how Isaac's wife might be related to the Simon Rinehart who was my mother-in-law's third great-grandfather.

Finding yet another Rinehart connection certainly couldn't hurt. But I'm not sure just how it will help, either. Still, I can't pass up the opportunity to follow the trail laid down by the Find A Grave volunteer who asserted that Cassa Rinehart Brown's parents were "William and Lila Ingram Rinehart."

But first, a little moment to do some grumbling. About spelling.

Now, everyone who knows anything about history—at least, in the early days of the United States—likely realizes that spelling was not always...shall we say, standardized. Not until 1806, when Noah Webster began his efforts to develop a consistent standard for spelling, did the English words our ancestors all took for granted in their everyday speech become formalized in their written format.

That standardization, of course, was for words—nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, prepositions. As for names, that may have been an entirely different matter, with one brother spelling his name Reinhardt while his sibling, moving to a different town in that new, English-speaking world, might eventually find his name spelled as Rinehart.

Despite that casualty in an era which was not yet accustomed to the rigorous demand for standardized spelling, there was one surname which somehow managed to maintain its spelling idiosyncracy: a surname prevalent in the Tenmile Country region which was consistently spelled Inghram.

Yes, there is an "h" in that "Ingram." If you doubt the spelling of that surname, witness the numbers of descendants of that original family of settlers who all maintained that same unusual form of spelling in this listing of obituaries transcribed from Greene County, Pennsylvania, newspapers of the 1800s. Scroll down to the entries spelled Inghram, and you'll see why I balked, yesterday, at spotting that Find A Grave note about Cassa Rinehart Brown's parents.

If you spend enough time wandering around the records of your ancestors in a given town or county, you eventually start seeing details you might otherwise have missed in a more cursory review. I call this "reading between the lines." In other words, extrapolating from the black and white details laid out on a page of records to discern what might have been going on behind the scenes.

In the case of Greene County, especially when researching my mother-in-law's Gordon and Rinehart ancestry, I couldn't help but notice how many times those extended families intermarried. I've seen Rineharts married to Inghrams, and Gordons married to Inghrams. Face it: if you are researching a family with many children who make it to adulthood—and those adults live in a limited community with a small, isolated population—you eventually notice multiple intermarriages among the same surnames. Enough, even, to make your head spin.

Now, couple that with the habit, among some people groups, of naming their precious babies after the oldest relatives for whom they still hold fond feelings. Of course, that is likely what is behind my difficulty in determining the right Simon Rinehart, a step vital to progressing toward that next one of ascertaining the identity of his parents. But it is also behind another prevalent name-after favorite: the given name of Delilah.

Yes, there was likely a Delilah Inghram. Worse, there were likely many Greene County belles with the name Delilah Inghram. In fact, in pulling out my latest family history acquisition, the Tenmile Country book by historian Howard Leckey, there was indeed (on page 310) a Delilah—not "Lila"—Inghram who married a William Rinehart. Cross-checking Leckey's notes on the corresponding Rinehart family, once again (on page 323) he mentions William Rinehart, conveniently listed as marrying someone named Delilah Inghram.

Lest you cut to the chase here and assume that our Cassa Rinehart who married Isaac Brown—the man who eventually became executor of Simon Rinehart's will—was, say, a sibling of that same Simon Rinehart, let warning bells and whistles go off in your head. There are problems with such a "solution," the least of which is the difficulty of conflicting dates in each person's timeline.

We may have to take a step back, cool our heels—after all, this search has been going on for years—and let a much more level head take charge. In which case I predict that, in our near future, we will begin building yet another test tree before we can form any hypothesis as to the connection between Isaac Brown, his wife Cassa, and the Simon Rinehart from Greene County who is still, sadly, parentless in his final resting place in Perry County, Ohio.

Time to Read Between the Lines

Sometimes, we struggle so much with our most difficult research problems that we get too amped up to see the obvious staring back at us. When that happens, it's time to sit down, take a deep breath, and re-evaluate what we can see about our case.

Let's take my problem case of the parents of Sarah Rinehart Gordon. Unfortunately for me, this particular Sarah—one of many with that given name among those in both the Rinehart family and that of the Gordons—was born far from civilization, in a time when birth records, if kept at all, were listed in a family Bible or noted upon baptism at the local church.

In Sarah's case, though, her parents had left their home in Greene County, Washington, and ended up somewhere in Kentucky by the time she was born in 1795. And yes, somehow, they ended up returning back to Greene County after her birth. Where such birth records might have been kept for her is a mystery which may remain shut to me and all other Gordon and Rinehart researchers.

Believe me, I've struggled with ways to find some trace of her family from those earliest years of their history. Sometimes, that struggle seems to do no more than to lock the puzzling researchers' minds to any possibility of seeing the answers laid plainly before their eyes. That's the reason for the pause to take a deep breath and reconsider.

So yesterday, I took the time to chill on the Rinehart mystery, and to cast a cool eye on the genealogical scenario. Thankfully, in that pause, I noticed a few things that may—or may not—turn out to be helpful clues.

The first is that I noticed the unusual spacing between the ages of the children in Simon and Ann Rinehart's family constellation. I can't tell, yet, whether Sarah was their oldest child, but I do have records asserting that she was born in Kentucky in 1795. From that point, the children's names I could find were for a son and three more daughters. Jesse, next born, arrived in 1806, back in Greene County, Pennsylvania. Following him were Hannah, Lucinda, and Charlotte. When I realized that those daughters were born in 1812, 1815, and 1818, respectively, it occurred to me that this was a far different pattern than what I could see for the other two children.

Normally, back in that era, it was easy to spot gaps in birth order, allowing us to draw such conclusions as the death of a child when the usual two-to-three-year pattern was broken. The birth years of the youngest three children in Simon and Ann Rinehart's situation are a good example of such a basic pattern.

The gap between Sarah and her brother Jesse, however, doesn't give us quite the same pattern. The gap between Sarah's 1795 arrival and Jesse's birth in 1806 is significant. Then, too, the gap between Jesse and the next sibling is also far greater than the typical two to three year spacing. What was going on in these gaps? Were these long time spans simply indicating missing children? After all, infant and child mortality in that era was far more common than what we experience in our own century.

However, keeping in mind the conflicting reports of mother's maiden name in Sarah's death record and Jesse's biographical sketch in a county history book, what we may be seeing is not a typographical error in the rush to publish a book of over one thousand pages. Could it be that Simon Rinehart's return to Greene County was for a specific—and likely tragic—reason?

While I'll need to seek documentation for such events to confirm this hypothesis, the least I can do for now is trace the Rineharts' trail from their wedding in Greene County before 1795, to Simon's return to Pennsylvania before his ultimate removal—with much of the Rinehart and Gordon clans—to Perry County, Ohio.

What I can find, for now, is the likely entry for Simon Rinehart in the 1830 census. That would be the last year he lived in Greene County—at least, according to his son's biography in a Perry County history book, years later. Tracing the birth locations of Simon's daughter Sarah's children can also provide a concurring timeline, as all of her children up until son Simon Rinehart Gordon were born in Greene County, but the next child—daughter Sarah Gordon—was born in Perry County in 1832.

The move from Pennsylvania to Ohio is far easier to explain than the earlier one from Pennsylvania to Kentucky and back home again: the extended family all thought it would be a good idea, and the move entailed a community of relatives all heading to the same location at about the same time. But the move in the 1790s to Kentucky and back?

Now I'm wondering whether something happened after the birth of Simon's daughter Sarah. Could it be that those conflicting reports of mother's maiden name were actually due to the fact that there were two different women married to Simon Rinehart? Could it be that Sarah lost her mother, shortly after her birth, and Simon and his infant returned home for help as soon as was possible? Could Ann Wiley have been Sarah's mom, and Ann Wise the mother of son Jesse?

Of course, it would be helpful to locate any marriage record to confirm that guess, but records at that early date were not kept at the courthouse. Pending any confirmation, though, I'll need to keep that hypothesis in my back pocket. This may be an alternate explanation for the conflicting reports showing up for two siblings in the Rinehart family.

Meanwhile, Back to the Other Jefferson

Let us leave behind us the upheaval in the wake of the escaping Jefferson Davis, erstwhile president of the Confederacy, and return to our consideration of another Jefferson. It's been a while since I last mentioned wanting to read about Thomas Jefferson. And in the month since I last brought up the subject, I've been steadily plowing through the book, Jefferson's Daughters.

My goal in reading the book—to spy between the lines and ferret out specific attitudes in the south in a bygone era—has been amply rewarded with a list of further reading. It's the daisy chain of footnotes leading me ever closer to—but not quite yet arrived at—my answer.

I am, however, still not finished with the book, despite starting my reading in earnest on a flight to Houston back in March. Yet in its pages, the author grapples with how the Jefferson-Hemings liaison came about, how Jefferson's family viewed the situation, how his neighbors saw it, and how the same practice was widespread, not only in Virginia, but throughout the south—calling out, specifically, the version practiced in Florida, the source of my own questioning.

While I'm not ready, yet, to say much on how that practice may have unfolded among my own ancestors, that it did happen, we already know; we have DNA results to inform us of that fact. On the one hand, the genetic genealogy angle leads to comparison of notes and matches and genealogies. But it's the other hand I want to examine much more closely. It's the psychology behind the situation that keeps me asking questions. For that, I'll likely have a lot more reading before I can see clearly what the case was, in the nearly invisible personal events of two hundred years ago. 

Dinner at George's Place

Monday may be the day everyone groans about at work, but my work this past Monday gave me great pleasure. It started out with a happy family reunion between two cousins, and culminated in a wonderful dinner with new friends in the house built by my third great-grandfather, George McClellan.

I can now, in addition to all that, say that I have been to the home of my Florida roots, thanks to the wonderful couple who has, over the past thirty six years, lovingly restored the old McClellan home in Wellborn, Florida. While they are not family per se, they have opened wide the doors to their home—the home which once was the residence of my own family.

Granted, that home was built well over one hundred years ago, and likely was not lived in for long by my third great-grandfather. With George dying in 1866, widowing his second wife of only five years, she had decided, at one point, to move the place from its location outside Wellborn right into the midst of the town. That feat required the house to be placed on logs and rolled for miles, pulled by the stubborn willpower of mules.

Such details certainly didn't please any of George's children from his first wife, the late Sidney Tison McClellan, whose demise in 1860 was followed almost immediately by George's marriage to Celestia Relief Holman. Perhaps you remember my mentioning the contention over George's will in some posts a while back. Add this to the reasons why his descendants are still complaining about that woman, even today.

Despite the house's history, my introduction to the misplaced residence turned into a lovely evening. The couple who have devoted their retirement years to the restoration of this two story farmhouse were kind to show us the many loving details for which they invested so much of their time and attention. Any details of the house—fireplace mantels, for instance—which could be restored to their former glory were painstakingly brought back to life, sometimes with small revisions to make the conversion work in modern times.

In the good old southern style, we couldn't just gawk, eat, and run, of course. The evening became a wonderful time to hear all the stories about the property and the people who once lived here—or thought they had a claim to the place. We had a chance to look over old history books about Suwannee County, as well as view the title history drawn up for the proud owners, an inch-thick folder tracing the property's history back to the original grantee, Louis Wellborn Dubois, the civil engineer who obtained the property from a sale of public lands of the State of Florida. It was he who  originally drew up the plat maps for the town which eventually bore his name (well, at least his middle name).

The day had started out with a grand tour of Wellborn—a task which took all of five minutes, it seemed—as my cousin explained all she had discovered about the town and its interrelated residents while we drove. We lingered at the McClellan cemetery, once part of the family's farm, but now deeded to the town. We walked amidst the graves of names now familiar to me after years of chasing their history on paper. Now I could see for myself what life was like in the town they once called home.

Researching by walking around—and talking...and talking...and talking—is a very different type of research journey than the usual paper chase at the archives. It's a time to let things unfold as people tell story after story. It's an experience in which you feel the history as much as you hear it, and though reading it may come into the picture, it isn't the featured event of the day. This is a town, as my hosts put it last night, where there are insiders, and then there are outsiders; though our hosts had spent the last thirty six years pouring their life efforts into restoring just one piece of Wellborn history, they just as likely could still be considered outsiders.

Today, we get to continue the conversation with some of the "insiders." This time, we'll meet a distant McClellan cousin who has been able to call Wellborn his home. Though we meet as strangers, hopefully we'll leave with a fuller sense of what it meant to be a McClellan growing up in—and still staying in—Wellborn. 

But Wait! Wasn't There Another Daughter?

There is one additional detail about Thirza Browne Cole, the woman whose photograph collection ended up abandoned in a northern California antique shop. You may have picked up on it, back when I discussed finding Thirza's obituary from 1979: the obituary made mention of a daughter.

She is survived by her daughter, June Buck of Lodi, and two grandchildren.

The confusing thing about that mention is that we had already seen that Thirza and William Cole's only daughter had died young in 1923. Who was this other daughter?

In order to discover anything further on this mystery person, it helps to go back to the earlier obituary of Thirza's husband, William Cole, who passed away in 1947. There, we notice a mention of someone with the same surname, Buck:

In addition to his wife, the deceased leaves a foster son, Geo. I. Buck of Lodi...

Other than that, for descendants, the same obituary mentioned only his deceased daughter, "the late Mrs. Pauline B. Lee."

So who were George and June Buck?

Going back to the 1940 census where William and Thirza Cole lived—in Lodi, California—there were two entries in their household which may help tell the tale. Although the enumerator seemed confused about how to properly report the relationships, he did include two names of interest in our current question. While there was an entry for a George I. Buck, Junior, there was also a name immediately above his in the Cole household for a single woman also bearing the surname Buck.

She, however, was not June. Her name was entered as Burnis Pauline—or possibly a sloppily written Caroline. Burnis was twenty two, and George was twenty. At first, the entry for Burnis' relationship seemed to be "relative" with a question mark included. Then, penciled in above was the word, foster, again followed by a question mark. George's entry was equally unclear, seeming first to say "son" which was lined out and replaced with the word "foster."

Checking the previous census record in 1930, George—then a ten year old boy—had again been listed in the Cole household, although then, the listing was simply as a lodger. There was no sign of Burnis, nor any hint about who June might have been.

This, of course, calls for further explanation. You know I couldn't just let it sit there. I noticed there was a record of George's World War II draft card, listing Thirza Cole as his next of kin. Yet, Thirza was not technically his closest relative. At about the same time, there was a 1940 census entry for the elder George I. Buck (remember, our George was a junior) which included a "Bernice P." Buck of the exact same age as our "Burnis" in his household.

Looking back through the years, the 1920 census offered a potential Buck household, complete with father George I. Buck, wife Althea, and including two year old "Burnis E." and infant George.

As for June, my guess was that she had married George, the Coles' foster son, though I couldn't find any marriage record online. What I did find was a sad Find A Grave memorial for George, dated years later—but during the years in which Thirza was still alive—noting that his wife was named June.

After George was gone, June must have continued maintaining the connection with Thirza. Perhaps their children grew up knowing Thirza as their grandmother, just as Thirza's obituary had listed them.

What I wonder is whether it was June who provided all the detail about Thirza's life for the newspaper article after Thirza's passing in 1979. The obituary was so full of minute details of Thirza's younger years, yet by that time, there were none of her peers to have provided that much information (unless it was from Karen's own parents, who, despite the distance between their two households, had kept in touch with Thirza since at least the 1940s).

All this may seem like a diversion from the true goal of finding Thirza's roots as we prepare to send her photographs home, but I don't think it is. Family is sometimes a concept that is more fluid than we may make it out to be. Sometimes, it just doesn't fly to tell the census enumerator, "It's complicated," about relationships. We're left reading between the lines.

Just this vignette of Thirza and William Cole's longstanding relationship to two—later three—young people who were not actually their kin reveals something about the personality of the couple we have been observing. They seem to be people who were willing to reach out to others in need, regardless of whether those others were family, friends, or lost souls desperately in need of love.  

Postscript on Yesterday: Ate My Words

Just when I finally come to the point of making a decision and moving on, wouldn't you know it but something redeeming happened to make me want to take back every sniveling word I've said this past week.

If the whole point of researching family history is to gain an accurate representation of your family's roots, and if that picture can only be gleaned via snapshots in time—a still life portrait of the family for the 1910 census, say, then nary a word about them for ten long years—one could say that this pursuit can become somewhat challenging.

If the whole point of this blog is to share the stories found along the way while engaging in this research process, when the going gets rough and, even while attempting to read between the lines, no stories materialize, one could say that source of inspiration, run dry, can choke off that flow of stories.

If the besetting sin of this writer is an inability to resist intuiting just what might have filled in the blanks in those in-between times spanning the gaps between census enumerations, we have just witnessed the concocting of an unfortunate brew.

My daughter talks about "empaths"—those sensitive people who can discern vibes emanating from others to which the average person is obtusely unaware. I wonder if, while speed-reading through generations of genealogical hints all in one swoop, I fall prey to that same sensitivity. It's a matter of reading between the lines—whether accurately or mistakenly—which leads to a sense of what family life might have been like for specific generations.

It was that same sensitivity which had made me jump to the conclusion that the Snider line I've been researching had such a depressing aura—the main reason I felt it was time to jump to a different research pursuit.

Of course, I spoke too soon.

While this pursuit hasn't turned up too many stories worth sharing—the very fuel that stokes my customary fervor to blog—it also leaves me without the details with which to compose posts. Face it, it would be rather tedious to simply read the blow by blow of my research day. There's a lot of ground that's covered before I reach turf worth writing home about.

That's why I decided to switch tracks the other day, and return to puzzling over my father's line. I'm hoping that will generate a few more stories worth sharing. And I promise I will proceed with that tomorrow.

In the meantime, it also left the impression that the line I had been working on was rife with all the problems we wish never to see a family have to endure.

Yesterday, thankfully, I ran across one redeeming glint of a different family vibe, both refreshing and encouraging. Ironically, the first clue came from those very Ancestry hint items which I most unmercifully mock: the family photos.

If you recall my derisive comments about yet again stumbling upon "Nana's Blue Room" and "Nana's Pink Room" when I was trying to clean out my umpteen-hundred hints on my trees at Ancestry, let me say in defense that those were usually nested within a family photo trove numbering upwards of fifty to sixty hints. Per individual. You can see why I'd get testy about that—especially considering they were more an amateur stab at House Beautiful than American Ancestors.

In the photo collection I came upon yesterday, it painted a picture of a family whose members evidently cared very much for each other. The candid poses captured in the photos shared told a story of a thousand words, and it was a relief to stumble upon the cache after seeing all the evidence of misfortune in the rest of the extended family.

While I don't know the family personally—this is a branch too far removed from ours to have been one we knew face to face—it was refreshing to encounter a family whose story on paper seemed uplifting in their care for each other.

Taking advantage of Ancestry's medium to share those photos, someone from that family used it as a vehicle to record remembrances of a generation now gone, inserting brief statements and stories about individuals in that family which gave a fuller sense of who they were, not just as statistics in a governmental document, but as real people.

That was an example of how one Ancestry subscriber maximized the utilities available to all of us as subscribers. Somehow, he or she had the touch to pull it off, not as the boring, bragging kitsch of an ancestry of materialism, but with the heartwarming sentiment of a large but close family bond. It was the kind of stranger's touch that evokes a "Wow, I want to get to know them" response.

I doubt I'll ever use the photo sharing features at Ancestry—and there are probably a number of other features at that site which will go under-utilized, too, I suspect—but it is refreshing to see someone put these tools to good use, and do it artfully, too.

As for my sense that I had stumbled upon a family whose lines were disintegrating with the ravages of the twentieth century's international upheaval, this was a refreshing wake up call. It helped me realize that some families somehow grasp the resilience to maintain their humanity, despite the turmoil swirling around them. It's refreshing to see that demonstrated, up close and personal. It makes me grateful, once again, to realize that knack of sensing a family's condition isn't always a bad thing.

Aren't you glad you know how to read the stories between the lines in those family trees?

Above: Deer in a Summer Meadow, oil on canvas by German landscape and wildlife painter Carl Zimmermann (1863 - 1930); courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.

Send No Flowers

It's hard enough for today's ex-convict to complete his prison term and return home as a rehabilitated member of society. As impossible as it might have been, at the time of John Hogue's 1917 trial for murder in Canada, to predict he would at some point see this day, his opportunity to return home came in the late 1920s.

If you are thinking in the historical context of a bigger picture, you are realizing just what type of economy those wings of freedom were escorting him into. Perhaps in the upheaval of the stock market crash of 1929 and the ensuing depression, life in Charleston, West Virginia, took on a very guarded shade of gray for everyone alike—no matter what role they assumed in the community.

Although no mention could be found concerning John Hogue's first years after returning to civilian life back home in Charleston, hopefully, he found a place to stay, a job and some means of re-integrating into the social fabric of his hometown. In later years, newspaper articles gave the occasional glimpse that John Hogue was still there, taking his place as part of the extended family, thanks to those long litanies of honorary pall bearers at funerals or guest lists for the gala celebrations of golden wedding anniversaries of his elders or exchanges of first vows of his siblings' children.

There was, however, one sad note capturing a moment in Hogue's life in the earlier years of his return home: the funeral notices of Susan Harvie Hogue, John's mother. As is often hoped by family historians, I found one of these notices—from The Charleston Daily Mail of Saturday evening, December 30, 1933—to confirm her relationships, along with some pertinent dates for this twice-married widow.

     Funeral services for Mrs. Susan Harvie Hogue, 79 years old, who died unexpectedly at her home in Brooks street Friday afternoon, will be held at the St. John's Episcopal church at 2:30 o'clock Sunday. Rev. John Gass will officiate, and burial will be in Spring Hill cemetery.
     Until a short time before her death at 5 o'clock Friday, Mrs. Hogue had been in her usual good health.
     Although she lived most of her life in Charleston, Mrs. Hogue was a native of Richmond, Va., where she was born in 1854. She was the daughter of Dr. Spicer Patrick and Mrs. Virginia Harvie Patrick.
     In 1872 she was married to Henry Poindexter, who died in 1879. In 1884 she was married to John Syme Hogue, who died in 1917.

The obituary went on to list Susan Harvie Hogue's six surviving children: a son and daughter from her first marriage, and three sons and an additional daughter from her second marriage, including her oldest, the recently-returned junior John Hogue. All were now living in Charleston at the time of her passing, in addition to two grandchildren and three brothers.

The funeral notice went on to conclude, "The family has requested that no flowers be sent," making me wonder whether to take the bait to read between the lines—shock of suddenness? Allergies?—or just be grateful for the written review confirming the family constellation as I presumed it would be.

Puzzling Over an Editorial Device

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Connecting the Dots

Whenever I run across a research problem that has me stymied, I've learned to recall a vignette from years ago. Though it's been so long since it happened, it still speaks to me, loud and clear. It's actually taken on a symbolic role in my mind, one that helps me shake loose of restrictive quandaries and have faith that there is an answer.

Have you ever had anything like that—a brief experience that seems to speak volumes? It's experiences like that I've learned to treasure, because they seem to take on a life bigger than the moment in which they occurred. They transmit a metaphysical message that keeps on inspiring, across the board, across time.

In this case, it was an event from my childhood that provided that message that still speaks volumes. Actually, it came from a television program that aired in my part of the country from the mid-fifties to the late eighties: Wonderama. But don't let that silly—and humble—setting fool you; this vignette came with a pearl of wisdom for me.

At least, that's where I think this little vignette occurred. Funny about childhood—some memories become so fuzzy over time, while others remain crystal clear. The show it happened on has obviously become a fuzzy memory—including the on-air personality whose act this was—but what happened has become a treasured symbol for me.

I seem to remember this was the work of a television host known in the broadcasting world as Sonny Fox, although come to find out now, his real name was Irwin Fox. Although, like many others in show business, he was featured in a variety of venues, the one he is likely most known for is his programming for children. Thus the Wonderama assignment.

Among the many features of the program—games, contests, educational segments, and, of course, the ever-present cartoons—was the part that I remember most. Anyone from his television audience could send Fox a letter, asking him to draw a picture of a specific item. From that day's selected fan mail, the host was to comply with the enclosed request on the air, live. The catch was that the artist was required to use only the lines, dots, or other squiggles sent in by the young letter-writer, and that Sonny Fox could only use a set amount of lines to connect all those dots—I think it was five—in such a way as to compose the requested drawing.

The camera would zoom in on the letter's set of squiggles, and then on Sonny Fox as he replicated the set of disjointed items on his easel. He would read the letter aloud so everyone would know what was being required of him. Then, he would set to work.

Of course, there would be a prize for anyone able to stump the on-air artist. But it was a rare moment when Fox conceded.

What was amazing—still is, even after all these years—was to see that TV host come up with creative ways to meet the goal by the deadline. He definitely had a way of thinking outside the box.

Whether I'm remembering the right program or the right television personality is a moot point after such a long time. But remembering that he demonstrated how it is possible to connect seemingly disjointed blips of ink on a page and create them into a viable sketch of the required subject has made an imprint on me. It's reminded me that no matter how unlikely it might seem that those dots, squiggles and lines could fit together, there really is a way.

Over the years, I've had experiences where I've faced that same type of challenge. I'm sure you have, too. It's those times when you think, "There's no way this is all going to hold together—and work out!" But when you know how to connect those dots—and do it with an artistic flair—it seems the world's your oyster.  

Above: 1915 oil on canvas by Swedish artist Carl Wilhelmson, "Brunnsvägen, Fiskebäckskil," depicting a path to the coast in his native fishing village, Fiskebäckskil; courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.  

Meanwhile, Back in Colorado

Perhaps Charles Broyles can be excused for not recalling the moment of his wife’s November 28, 1880, death. After all, he was in Colorado, while she passed away in their residence back in Dalton, Georgia—a trifling matter of fourteen hundred miles between them at the time. I imagine news, back then, could travel slowly.

We can be sure, though, that he received the news well before the next event he documented in his journal.

In October 1882 while at San Luis Court I met Miss Nellie Armstrong, a highly respectable young woman, and fell in love with her. My love increased as I knew her the more and it was reciprocated and in April 1884 we were married at San Acacio, Costilla Co. Colorado. She was from Indiana and an intelligent highly esteemed lady. And at this writing the fruits the marriage are two smart promising boys.

Perhaps we can’t fault Charles for a few other not-quite-accurate details in this account. After all, according to Charles’ marriage record, at the time he married Miss Nellie Armstrong, he was fifty five—while she was twenty four.

Well, actually, I should point out that Charles claimed he was fifty five. On May 7, 1884—the actual date in which they stood before the Justice of the Peace in Conejos County—Charles would have been fifty eight years of age.

So, perhaps by the time he was writing his memoirs, his memory was beginning to lose its youthful vigor.

The question remains: who was this young woman who caught Charles’ attention? According to a story given by Dryden Johnson Broyles, Charles’ and Nellie’s youngest son, to Montague Laffitte Boyd, compiler of the Broyles genealogy published in 1959, Nellie was born in Brooksburg, Indiana, on November 19, 1860. (Brooksburg, incidentally, had been founded by her maternal grandfather.)

According to the author, Dryden had told him,

She came to Colorado with two of her brothers, Charles and John Armstrong. They intended to homestead land in the San Luis Valley, but the land they wanted was under Spanish Grant.... Her brothers then went West and she got a job teaching school in the Spanish town of San Luis…. She was the first English speaking teacher in that town.

All told, Charles and Nellie had eight children of their own—six sons and two daughters. Seven of those children survived to adulthood, including one son whom Charles chose, inexplicably—awkwardly—to name Charles Edward Broyles. Keeping in mind that his own firstborn with first wife Lucy was also named Charles Edward Broyles, this beckons us to once again attempt reading through that nether land embedded between the lines of his journal. While he was quite pleased with himself to announce, “And at this writing the fruits of the marriage are two smart promising boys,” he had not represented his first family in such glowing terms.

In recapping—as you’ll no doubt remember—his marriage to Lucy, he had added one more assessment to that episode, which I had previously left out of his narrative. Returning to pick up the rest of Charles’ original statement there, it makes me wonder just why he could boast so proudly about his second family, while not sharing that sentiment regarding the children of the first wife he had so greatly revered.

And now four boys and two girls are left in Georgia as the fruit of our marriage. I am ashamed of none of them, yet might have been made to feel prouder.

Money Woes

…I was disabled and had neither horse nor money to regain my command.

When examining the timeline and narrative of Charles Edward Broyles in his service to the Confederate Army during the Civil War, there are a few places where we need to stop and take a long, hard look between the lines of his narrative. I believe examining those unexplained blank spots will ultimately help us discern the reasons behind his abrupt move from his home in Dalton, Georgia, to the apparent second life he lived, once he arrived in Colorado territory.

Going back to the entries in Charles’ journal that I had mentioned yesterday, there were a couple sentences we need to look at another time.

The first one, above, mentions how the loss of his horse and money hampered him from returning to service in the Confederate army. While I can’t find any confirmation of this online—and if you are well versed in Civil War era military requirements, please add to the conversation in the comments below—there were apparently requirements beyond that of military skill or leadership qualities, in becoming a person of rank. I had seen hints of that when researching my second great grandfather, Charles’ younger brother Thomas, who had obtained a horse so he could serve in the cavalry rather than as a foot soldier in the infantry. The newly-formed Confederate government was apparently unable to provide mounts for these men; they had to obtain their own.

Again, though I haven’t been able to find confirmation of this, Charles’ journal entry seems to indicate that it was incumbent upon the officer himself to provide financial backing in order to “raise a regiment,” as Charles did along with Colonel Jesse A. Glenn of the 36th Georgia Infantry.

While I am not familiar with the aspects of achieving a rank of command in that era of military history, it seems Charles’ journal entries are implying such requirements. Because of his prior injury to his feet during his first tour of duty (as “a foot”), and also possibly because of his history of having had typhoid fever in his youth (“that so crippled my limbs”), his only possibility of continued service may well have been mounted upon a horse.

Then on its way to North Carolina I was paroled at Anderson Court House S. C. and in the fall of 1865 returned with my family to Dalton Ga.

The journal narrative here enters a murky phase in Charles’ description of his final days of service. He was “furloughed…on the 5^th day of February 1865, on account of rheumatism” in Augusta, Georgia, yet not paroled until the unit reached “Anderson Court House S. C.” And while the war officially ended on April 9, 1865, with the surrender of General Robert E. Lee in Virginia, conclusions of hostilities were obtained more as a rolling date, as department after department of the fallen Confederacy yielded to the reality of their losses.

It is hard, from the overview of history, to determine exactly where Charles Broyles might have been during this range of surrender dates. He likely was still considered part of the armies of General Joseph E. Johnston and, due to the rolling dates of surrender even within these companies, may have been—since Charles mentions “on its way to North Carolina”—released as the company made its way to Greensboro by May 4, 1865.

Granted, it seems as if there is an unexplained gap between the date of surrender—wherever and whenever it was for Charles’ company—and his return to his home in Dalton, Georgia in “the fall of 1865.”

This, however, is another example of the gaps in narrative for which we’ve got to read between the lines. Notice he says “returned with my family to Dalton.” This brings up another question: while he was away from home, serving in the Confederate army, where was his family? By the start of the war, he and his wife, Lucy, had had five children. This is a difficult position in which to put a family of such size, especially considering the long absence of the family’s traditional breadwinner.

Not to mention, what about their safety while the Union army was ravaging a significant swath of land across the state of Georgia? We need to remember that neither Charles nor Lucy had close relatives in the area; both had been born and raised in South Carolina.

It is interesting to note that Charles was paroled at “Anderson Court House S. C.” A little geography lesson is in order here. If you remember, Charles’ childhood home was in a place in South Carolina that had once been called Pendleton District. The term “district,” if you follow a geo-political timeline, had been used alternately with that of “county” in South Carolina.

Up until 1826, the Pendleton District included a large area of land in upstate South Carolina which claimed as its county seat the town—logically—of Pendleton. However, in 1826, it was determined that the area needed to be subdivided, and two new districts were formed: one named Pickens, the other named Anderson. Because the town of Pendleton was considered to be too close to the border of the new Pickens District, a courthouse was established at the center of the new Anderson District—named, appropriately, Anderson Courthouse.

If you’ve been following the saga of Charles Broyles for the past several days, you are probably realizing that Anderson Courthouse was simply the new digs for the county seat of what once was considered the home district of the Broyles household. In other words, though the boundaries had changed, for Charles to head to Anderson Courthouse was for him to return to the area of his old family home.

Why would Charles return to South Carolina instead of his own home in Dalton, Georgia? It is likely that his wife and children rode out the turmoil of war, living either with Lucy’s own family in Barnwell or with Charles’ family in the old Pendleton District of South Carolina.

Keep in mind that the overarching purpose of exploring this line of my second great grandfather’s brother is to explore the possible network and connections that led my own ancestor to meet his bride, who was also a Georgia resident, at least before and after the war. The question of where these women and children went to avoid becoming casualties of battles—or at least to mitigate their suffering during the hardship of war times—may help lead us to explanations of how future familial connections were made.

Above: Dalton looking east to Cohutta Mountains; pencil, Chinese white and black ink wash on green paper by Alfred Rudolph Waud, labeled "Battle of Dalton" and dated October 13, 1864; courtesy Library of Congress; in the public domain.

So, Ask!

Apparently, I triggered a volley of disgruntled responses with yesterday’s post. Of course, I could chalk that up to the inattentiveness of my senior editor—who, it was pointed out, also neglected to insert the phrase “devastatingly handsome” before the entry about the “fun-loving emcee.” Perhaps, it would have been a wiser course to simply have added quote marks around the title, “Three Things You Might Not Know About Me,” implying by those quotes the name of an as-yet unrevealed creation, rather than the promise of an action to be taken by the author. Especially an action for which some of you have expressed your expectation of fulfillment.

I am so puzzled by that revelation. I mean, here I sit, an unassuming genealogy blogger, writing my heart out, day by day. Believing in the natural process of osmosis, I figure there is much to be learned by reading between the lines. Inference is a handy skill to cultivate.

Besides, what’s there to know? I may seem to be The Intrepid Introvert, but the reality of it all is more like “Fuddy Duddy” than Fantastic. Not even close to Mysterious. Definitely not Outrageous.

Granted, I don’t mind writing the stories of ancestors who could be labeled as fantastic—or even mysterious or outrageous—but when it comes to writing about, well, me, it seems to lack that same verve. I know some bloggers see it differently, and are quite willing to fling their virtual selves across the blogosphere with abandon. Thankfully, others approach the task with a modest grace (and even a welcome touch of humor), like How Did I Get Here’s Andrea Kelleher, who has chosen to participate in the “Book of Me” meme initiated by Julie Goucher of Angler’s Rest.

I’ve never been one for taking up my keyboard and following memes. I’ve got too much else to write about. I sometimes find myself in a dither over the thought that, if I don’t “get this all down on paper,” all that research will somehow be lost to subsequent generations. That would be such a horrible crime.

But since you brought it up…what three things would it be that you, as reader, are seeking? If there are three questions you are just dying to ask, well, ask on! If not, then fine. Suffice it to say there are many more than three things you might not know about me—as I might not know about you, either.

If we were ever to meet, face to face, we’d discover we know very little about each other. On the other hand, if you have been stopping by A Family Tapestry on a regular basis (as I have at your blog as well), in that hypothetical face-to-face meet-up, we might discover there is quite a bit we do already know about each other. Digital life can be such an enigma.

All the more reason to someday find a way to connect.

Mulling Over Dates and Details

Think about it: a man—married and with a young child at home—suddenly flees the country for a distant land. Barely a year later, he is shot and dies. Meanwhile, his brother-in-law is captured and tried for his crimes, with the verdict being transportation—that ignoble one-way ticket to Oz.

Wouldn’t you be wondering if there were something going on in that family?

The family I’m referring to is that of Stephen Maloy—or Mulloy, depending on which document his name is extracted from—and his wife Anne Flanagan Maloy, whose brother, William Flanagan, might have benefited from the kind of quick-thinking action Stephen Maloy took.

Granted, the Great Famine in Ireland was still extracting its severe toll on the population, but one does not flee from hardships—even devastating ones such as this—with quite the same urgency and secrecy. To have not even told his wife of his intentions until there was no turning back gives us a clue as to Stephen Maloy's need to escape.

But—escape from what?

Seeing the date of his letter to Anne was early in the year 1849, I had wondered about the possibility of Stephen’s involvement in any of the political grumblings of the era. There were, after all, many reasons the Irish were not satisfied with the British ruling class at that time.

I wondered just where Stephen and William stood, in the matter of liberation from British rule. Could either of them have been involved in these political rumblings? After all, the Young Irelanders’ inspiration—Thomas Davis—was born in Mallow, County Cork, not far from where Stephen, Anne and baby Catherine had been living before his abrupt departure in February, 1849. Besides, there was a faction of Young Irelanders active in the city of Cork, the main “urban” area closest to the Maloy residence.

Over the years, I’ve tried to uncover any links between either of our two family members and the political rumblings of the time without much success. I ran across a biography of William Smith O’Brien, one of the leaders of the Young Irelanders movement, which was edifying in a general way, but unsatisfactory in allowing me to reach any conclusion about the lowly two ancestors holding my particular interest.

I exchanged correspondence with a member of the Cork Genealogical Society quite a while ago, benefitting, in a general way, from suggestions she provided of websites for further research. As to the specific possibility of involvement in the midst of action—or at least planning or perpetrating what followed—I am still lacking any more details providing names of the commoner sort. Whether Stephen Maloy escaped capture for participation in such sedition, or whether William Flanagan got his just deserts in the judgment that sent him packing to an entirely different kind of New World, I still can’t say.

The only thing I know for sure: the hasty—and secretive—departure for Boston made by a young husband and father must have had a much different impetus than that of mere survival in the midst of famine.

Remembering Another Daughter

Could it be? A life without upheavals, dreadful illnesses, or unforeseen tragedies?

With only official documents to rely upon in piecing together the life and times of my grand-aunt, Chevis Davis Chitwood Kyte, by the time of her youngest child’s birth, I found little to indicate anything like the problems she had encountered in past family relationships.

I’d like to exclaim, “Thankfully!” but I have no way of knowing that for certain.

However, here’s what I know about this child who would have been my mother’s fourth-oldest cousin.

Luther and Chevis Kyte’s youngest daughter was born March 2, 1919, in Erwin, Tennessee. They named the girl Emma Lee.

You would think searching for records for a name as simple as this would be fairly straightforward. But that’s not the way it’s been. Besides the spelling struggle between Kite and Kyte—Kyte winning by the time of the 1940 census—and that of Chevis’ own unusual name, there was the additional issue of the baby’s name: Emma Lee sounds exactly like the more widely used Emily.

But starting off with a listing as a son? The 1920 census was no help with this unexpected entry. Thankfully, relying on the names of others known to be in the household—mainly Chevis’ son from her first marriage to H. M. Chitwood—guided me to the right records.

I assure you, the infant listed in that 1920 census as “Ema Lee” was in no way a son.

With the arrival of the 1930 census, the child was now properly listed as a female, but with the rigid adherence to listing first names for given names, the household showed father as Franklin—settling, at least for that year what his preferred name was for that initial “F”—and mother as Mary, Chevis’ actual first name.

The baby? Now eleven years of age, she was listed as Emily. Can’t really fault anyone for that spelling guess.

With the 1940 census taken in Unicoi County, Tennessee, on April 16, I was curious to see how the household would be listed. Not because of the couple’s divorce, or even in question of how the surname would be spelled—it was Kyte that year—but because by now, Emma Lee had turned twenty one years of age.

Despite the discovery that FamilySearch.org indexers had decided to read Emma Lee’s mother’s name as “Cherie” instead of the correct Chevis, thanks once again for being able to search by her son’s Chitwood surname, I was able to locate the correct entry. There, as if nothing had changed, her daughter Emma Lee was still listed in the household.

With no circled “X” listed at this address to indicate who had provided the household’s information to the census taker, I suspect the neighbors were deputized to provide the gossip gospel truth, so help them, God.

They got it wrong.

Apparently, unbeknownst to those neighbors, Emma Lee had fallen head over heals in love with a part time employee at her mother’s place of work and, two months prior to the date of the 1940 census, she and Clifford J. Engle had visited the county courthouse to make application for their marriage license. On February 11, the Reverend John C. Blalock solemnized the rite of matrimony and pronounced the couple husband and wife.

By the summer of 1941, another generation began as Clifford and Emma Lee welcomed their firstborn son into the fledgling household.

Do I know anything more than this about that individual who would be my second cousin? Not really. Nor do I know much more about his parents. Unless this line is plagued with some of the name-changing and initials-swapping habits of the other Tennesseans in this line, I can assume that Clifford J. Engle was exactly that, and suppose that I’ve found his entry in the 1940 census, likewise listed as single and at his parents’ home. I can also presume that a 1944 World War II enlistment record belonged to him. Other than that, beyond the 1940 census, there aren’t as many governmental documents available online.

As for Emma Lee, the only other information I can glean of her life comes from her obituary. She was eighty five at the time of her passing. She lived and died in that same small town in Tennessee—Erwin—as her mother and maternal grandmother. While nothing was mentioned in the obituary about her husband, the memorial mentioned the thirty six years she had worked as a waitress in both Florida and New Jersey. Perhaps that little detail speaks volumes about how life went for her.

Beside her son and her half-brother, she had no other survivors than several unnamed nieces and nephews, and her life was commemorated through a private memorial service. There wasn’t even any mention of a burial location where she could be remembered.

Sometimes, when I recall my curiosity upon first discovering the Davis family Bible, I wonder if any of these relatives or their descendants had any idea that a blood relation they never knew about would someday be asking questions about them. Who were they? What were they like? What happened to them? Why haven’t I ever met them? My mother and aunt were certainly at a loss as to how to respond to such questions, especially when confronted with them from the mouth of a child. They really didn’t know the answers.

Perhaps families really do drift apart—after all, how many people do you know who are not family historians yet know their second and third cousins? I may be unusual, but I find myself carrying these names around in my heart, wondering where they are, what has become of them. Call it an intangible link, like some kind of ethereal DNA—after all these generations, I still feel the pull of that connection.

Confusion Despite Official Documents

Sometimes, in researching our family history, the data dump can morph into an avalanche of dull, dry dates, places and names. With the information overload we subject ourselves to by focusing on getting the facts, we can find ourselves losing sight of the people we originally sought to know.

I confess that exact thing happened as I was collecting the details for Lummie Davis Moore, the woman whose two letters I had just transcribed and posted here in the past week.

Even in the midst of attempting to draw up a timeline of her life to help sift through the clues, I missed one very important fact. In the middle of the narrative of these two letters, I lost sight of the woman’s impending death. It wasn’t until just a few days ago, when in the process of pasting the hyperlink to her page on my very outdated yet publicly-accessible Rootsweb tree, I happened to notice the year of her death: 1962.

“That’s funny,” I thought to myself, “That’s the same year as these letters.”

“Huh?!”

Yes, wallowing in the midst of all this family history overload, I got slapped in the face by that very detail. I have no idea how I had missed it.

It was sad to realize that—even disappointing. It was as if I were reliving that episode in my grand-aunt’s life with her, hoping for the best for her recovery.

Yes, Lummie was infused with an upbeat attitude, seemed restless and full of energy despite her serious injury—but, as often happened to those whose aging hips suffered a fracture, while focusing on the bone that needed mending, the patient was caught unawares with a side effect of the long healing process.

In many cases, the risk to those recuperating from hip repair is pneumonia. As it turned out in Lummie’s case, her decline was not at all that type of lingering misery, but an almost instantaneous attack: she fell to a case of coronary thrombosis. According to the death certificate, length of time between onset and death was five minutes.

While the quickness of the attack may have been merciful for Lummie, I can only imagine how brutal the news must have been for her daughter. Sarah Martha, recently returned home in the Baltimore, Maryland, area with a newborn daughter of her own, was too far removed from Lummie’s Phoenix home to know anything more than the type of news her mother had been sharing with her own brother in the letters we’ve just read.

Piecing together the story now—over fifty years later—I’m encountering a lot of gaps. The fact that there are discrepancies in the official documents doesn’t help. While I’m overjoyed to see the State of Arizona provide genealogical researchers with free access to their online death records through—thankfully!—the year 1962, I’m a bit stymied by the fact that some dates and details don’t line up in the certificate issued after Lummie’s passing.

According to Lummie’s death certificate, she was the daughter of Will David, which of course should be Davis. That became the first clue tipping me off that this document may not be one hundred percent reliable. Of course, it’s pretty hard to demand any family member to answer a barrage of questions one hundred percent accurately under duress of a family death. Perhaps that is why Lummie’s son-in-law, C. J. McKinnon, was listed as the informant instead of her own daughter.

However, when it comes to the date of death, that would seem to be factual information—not something swayed by how distraught the family might have been feeling.

Yet, the death certificate indicates Lummie’s date of death to have been July 19, 1962.

That causes problems when we seek out her obituary record. First, though Lummie claimed many friends in her residence of the past twelve years, I’ve been unable to locate any mention of her death in the Phoenix area newspapers so far. However, I did find an obituary for Lummie in her home town, Erwin, Tennessee.

Published in The Erwin Record, it was dated July 13, 1962—six days before Arizona had recorded her passing (for which I can’t help but recall the statement attributed to Mark Twain, “Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated”).

To resolve such a records dilemma, don’t think it will help to resort to the cemetery’s grave marker. Apparently—at least according to the volunteer transcriber—engraved in stone is the year, 1967. It will either take a trip to Erwin—or the good graces of a Find A Grave volunteer—to stop by Evergreen Cemetery to brush away the camouflaging wisps of Bermuda grass disguising that last digit in the engraving.

Somehow, local researchers in the Erwin area managed to unearth a date which agrees with the one I had always understood to be Lummie's date of death. According to the book, Cemeteries of Unicoi County Tennessee, by the Unicoi County Historical Society, it was on July 9, 1962, that the Moore and Davis families lost a mother, grandmother, and sister.

Perhaps it was in all the scramble to pack and move their belongings from Roanoke, Virginia, back to their old home in Columbus, Ohio—and then, suddenly, to have to return to the old Davis home in Tennessee, that was the cause of these two letters being tucked away by Lummie's brother and sister-in-law, Jack and Ruth Davis. And, for the next fifty one and a half years, to lay undisturbed in their hideout until another passing passed along the whole passel of papers to me.

Mrs. Lummie Davis Moore, formerly of Erwin, died unexpectedly Thursday in Phoenix, Ariz. Death was attributed to a heart attack. Funeral services will be held today (Wednesday) at 10 a.m. from the Boyd-DeArmond Funeral Home. Dr. Melvin Faulkner, pastor of First Baptist Church, will officiate. She was an Erwin native, the daughter of the late William and Cassie Booth Davis. She was the widow of Wallace Moore, who died in 1952. She had lived in Honduras, Central America, for the past 12 years. She was a member of the Women's Club and the Harmony Club in Phoenix. She was also a member of the Baptist Church. Surviving are one daughter, Mrs. C. J. McKinnon of Ellicott City, Md.; one sister, Mrs. Horace Martin, Erwin, and three grandchildren. Boyd-DeArmond Funeral Home in charge.