Following a Different Line

As we learn more and more about the family represented in several century-old photographs abandoned in a northern California antique shop, it becomes clear that finding a descendant to whom we can bestow these treasures is still challenging. We know the pictures are connected to the family of Samuel and Annie Tucker of Oregon, but despite boasting a large family, the Tuckers have not gifted us with a simple path from these great-great grandparents to the present.

It already appears we may not find any living descendant of eldest son James Tucker's only child. There are, however, seven other siblings whom we can attempt tracing. Going in order, the next oldest child would be the Tuckers' daughter Eva. Let's see what can be discovered about her—and her descendants.

According to the 1900 census, Eva was born in March of 1887, back in Illinois, before the Tucker family moved first to Nebraska, and then completed the trip all the way to Oregon before 1900. Though she and her younger sister Maud—whom we've already met—were so close in age, in their family photograph it still looks pretty clear whom we can identify as the oldest of the two girls.

By December 14, 1905, Eva had married a man by the name of Robert Francis Rawlins. While the marriage index gives very little information about Eva's husband, we learn from the 1910 census that he was working as an electrician in Spokane, Washington.

We also learn from that 1910 census that its enumerator had horrible handwriting—particularly frustrating in that it bars us from understanding where this Robert Rawlins came from. From what we can decipher from the census, he was an immigrant to the United States, claiming an arrival in 1904. His country of origin was somewhere in the English-speaking world, though the transcriber of the original document interpreted the scrawl to state, "Austria."

One other detail we could determine from that 1910 census was that Robert was almost ten years older than his bride—perhaps leading to the situation Eva found herself in, not much later, in which she and her young son Francis were left without him at his passing in 1918. Though there was no photograph accompanying his Find A Grave memorial, a volunteer gave Robert's place of birth as Grafton in New South Wales, Australia—thus, if correct (though unsourced), solving the mystery lingering from that 1910 census entry.

Thus, young Francis was left fatherless at about ten years of age—and widow Eva soon did what many women did in such a situation: remarry. That's when we realize that, once again, this family has crossed paths with names we've already researched in this quest to reunite abandoned family photographs with their subjects' descendants.

Above: Say, where? Excerpt from the 1910 U.S. Census for Spokane, Washington, showing the line items on left column for place of birth for Robert, Eva, and Francis Rawlins; the upper line is difficult to interpret (Aut? Ata?) for Robert's place of origin. Image courtesy Ancestry.com.

When Ancestors Made Headlines

It can trigger an uneasy feeling, discovering that an ancestor's name actually appeared in newspaper headlines. Whether as villain or victim, such an event affords us as researchers a lens through which to view an episode in our forebear's lifetime. Such was the case with yet another Knapp family member, an uncle of William Malphus Knapp, the man whom we originally discovered through his abandoned photograph.

This particular uncle was named Cornelius Knapp. Like some of the other uncles of William Malphus Knapp, Cornelius' place of birth was alternately reported to be either Ohio or Canada. The family had moved from Ontario to eventually reside in Sandusky, Ohio, so either location is likely for Cornelius' start in life.

Eventually, Cornelius ended up in Adair County, Missouri, where he married a woman by the name of Massey Ann Elliott in 1858.

The couple stayed on in Adair County through at least the 1870 census, but some time after that, they made the move out west to Washington. They settled in Cowlitz County, a name in Washington now becoming familiar to us as we learn about the extended Knapp family and how many of their relatives made that same move.

As Washington did not achieve statehood until 1889, the Knapps' arrival there placed them in the category of "pioneers." That, at least, was how they were described in front page headlines on Friday, November 30, 1900, in the Tacoma Daily Ledger.

"Pioneers Murdered" declared the news wire report issued from Seattle, leading into a detailed description of what had happened. The Knapp couple, eating dinner in the home where they had settled eighteen years prior, was shot through a window "by an unknown assassin." Death was instant for Massey, and followed quickly for Cornelius as well.

News of the double murder and the still at-large assailant spread quickly. A follow up article, though mistakenly mentioning that the Knapp couple had been murdered on Thanksgiving evening (it was actually on the eve of Thanksgiving that year), reported that by Monday, December 3, Washington governor John Rankin Rogers had offered a reward "for the apprehension and conviction of the murderer."

Not surprisingly, shortly thereafter, a suspect was arrested on charges of murdering the Knapp couple. That, however, was not all. On the night of the murders, apparently a warehouse was also broken into, and the trail of clues led the sheriff to one particular suspect, a man named Martin Stickel. It was the suspect's own actions, in that initial encounter with law enforcement, that led investigators to clues resolving yet another murder.

By December 21, the Tacoma newspaper reported that the suspect had been found guilty of that other murder—one for which much substantiating evidence had been found. (Apparently, the authorities had chosen to try the suspect for this other, older, murder first, and use the case of the Knapp murders as follow up, in case the jury didn't return a verdict requiring capital punishment for the earlier murder.)

News reports continued in other newspapers. On December 27, the Aberdeen Herald, for instance, called murderer Martin Stickel "the most notorious and cold-blooded criminal" ever to be tried in Cowlitz County. Not surprisingly, Stickel was sentenced to be hanged, but even that added to his notoriety, for he unwittingly achieved the dubious distinction of being the last murderer to be hanged in Cowlitz county by local authorities. After that point, the state took jurisdiction over executions.

Whether the tragedy and its aftermath played any role in William Malphus Knapp's decision to return to the midwest after 1900, I can't say. There were other Knapp family members who remained in the Washington and Oregon vicinity. But the event itself—not to mention the flurry of news reports as the case made its way through court—certainly must have been difficult for the family to endure.

Cornelius and Massey Knapp were buried in Castle Rock, the same community in Cowlitz County where they had settled eighteen years earlier. Thanks to the efforts of yet another Find A Grave volunteer—plus input from another Knapp family researcher—Cornelius Knapp's memorial is full of information concerning the abrupt and tragic end of their lives.

While researchers are usually eager to uncover details of their ancestors' lives, finding family in the limelight like this is not the fortunate discovery we hope to locate. Newspapers can become the source of secrets long forgotten, or explain difficult circumstances otherwise endured in silence. Though we can presume that at some time, it is possible for the persistent researcher to uncover a newspaper report on an ancestor, learning of such stories can sometimes turn out to be unnerving.


Above: Detail from the 1858 Adair County, Missouri, marriage record of Cornelius Knapp and Massey Ann Elliott; image courtesy Ancestry.com.  
     

Where He Actually Was

When the obituary says one of your ancestors was laid to rest in a specific cemetery, do you take the newspaper's word for it?

Not that I doubt the Kelsonian when it concluded its lengthy article on the deceased Peter Jones Knapp with the statement, "with final services at the Portland Crematorium." After all, though the Crematorium was not specifically named, Peter's death certificate did give a date of burial as April 16, 1924, with the location as Portland, Oregon.

The only catch was: Peter wasn't there.

Well, he was there...sort of. But not in the way you'd expect, at a cemetery. As one particular Knapp researcher discovered when she went to the Crematorium to inquire about his burial records, it turns out neither Peter nor his wife—Georgiana Eliza Pierson—were actually buried.

Eventually, the two missing persons were found, not in a niche, but on a shelf. They had never received that formal burial the newspaper had asserted was going to happen.

That discovery set in motion a process which led to a proper military ceremony for the last remaining Civil War veteran, eighty eight years—to the day—following Peter Knapp's death in April of 1924.

It was the wife of a descendant of this Peter Knapp's namesake—the infant Peter (Jackson) Knapp whose photo I've sent her way—who told me about this entire story, sharing the links to news coverage of the event, itself. If you are not usually one to click on links and follow the story elsewhere, I urge you to make one exception today and check out the links this Knapp researcher sent me.

Of course, the information on Peter Jones Knapp's obituary article in his Cowlitz County, Washington, hometown, along with a photo of him in his later years, is posted on his memorial at Find A Grave. In addition, Civil War veteran Peter's eventual burial with full military honors at Willamette National Cemetery, in 2012, is documented—with an interesting twist—in a report by CBS News. And for those who like to feel as if they are part of the event, a three minute long YouTube presentation captures the highlights of that day.

Reading all those reports and watching the video—plus exchanging emails with the researcher who discovered all this information—didn't just serve to inform me of one family's history. Besides the Knapp family story, I am now wondering just how many others may have similar stories. Our local genealogical society, for instance, became aware of many such cremains still lodged in storage for lack of the contact information on a close family member. Some were indigents, whose remains are now considered the responsibility of a county governmental agency, for instance, but there are many researchers who have the skills to help reunite these missing people with their family members, who surely have questions about just what became of their relative.

This Knapp story also reminds me of the vital importance of having a photo of a burial site on Find A Grave—or any other such program. While that doesn't necessarily guarantee that the person actually lies beneath the monument or marker, it at least signifies an official memorial for that family member.

What is reported on a death record may not turn out to be what actually became of an ancestor after his or her passing; the act of seeking confirmation may turn up some surprising details, as we saw in Peter Jones Knapp's case. While such instances may be rare, I am confident Peter Knapp's is not the only example.


Above: Excerpt from Peter Jones Knapp's 1924 Washington state death certificate showing the "place of burial, cremation, or removal." Image courtesy FamilySearch.org.      

There are Other Trees out There

Not all photo connections come, courtesy of the subscribers at Ancestry.com. In the case of the next Knapp photograph I recently sent home to family, I found that descendant thanks to Find A Grave.

Mind you, that descendant is alive and kicking, despite being found at Find A Grave. What happened is this: I kept running across items, in each Knapp family member's memorial at Find A Grave, with the name of one specific volunteer. Could it be possible that this avid researcher was somehow connected with the family I was researching?

I decided to test that hypothesis, and sent the mystery volunteer a message. Within a matter of a few hours, I had my confirmation. Here was another diligent researcher, working on her husband's line—the line of one of the grandsons of Peter (alias Jackson) Knapp, the infant in the 1899 portrait of two sons of George Harlow Knapp, William Malphus Knapp's brother.

As it turns out, this researcher is a font of information on the extended Knapp family. She shared with me so many fascinating stories and resources about William Malphus Knapp, his brothers, and his uncles. And yet, she has no tree posted at Ancestry. Though an active researcher, she finds she can keep her research budget low by posting her tree at Geni.com and locating digitized documents through FamilySearch.org.

In addition to that, she puts a lot of details she has gleaned onto Find A Grave, which is how I found her—a good reminder to me, when I am again faced with not being able to locate any descendants of an abandoned antique photograph.

Of course, I can't just say this researcher has found so many fascinating stories without actually sharing them with you. So...with tomorrow's post, we'll step back a generation or two to get our bearings, then delve into the first of two stories: the one about the Civil War veteran uncle for whom Peter (Jackson) Knapp was named. From there, we'll wander over to learn about another Knapp family relative from that same town in Cowlitz County, Washington, where we had found the family of Peter and Arthur Knapp in 1900, and peruse the shocking newspaper headlines from a city once known, due to its wild reputation, as "Little Chicago."

In the Bay Near New Pass Bridge

It was an abandoned family photograph that enticed me to delve into the story of the Knapp family and all the ins and outs of their many generations of brothers and sisters. And now that I'm almost to the point of confirming that the original portrait of William Malphus Knapp had made its way home—as well as some of the others from this family—I may as well wrap up the story of what became of William's brother George.

William and George had headed west to Washington from their family's Kansas home (as well as others in the Knapp family, but that's a story for another day). While George stayed in Washington—or strayed to nearby Oregon when jobs were tight—he eventually dropped from sight in the Pacific Northwest.

There's a reason for that: he moved. Ultimately ending up in Florida—as far from Washington state as is possible in the continental United States—George eventually showed up in Sarasota, Florida, where he boasted, in the 1930 census, of being the captain of a yacht.

He was also known for a time as a barge operator. At least, that's what he was identified as in the Sarasota Herald in the edition for Tuesday, April 21, 1931. There, he made front page headlines—though below the fold—after his boat had been spotted, early that morning, drifting. The vessel was being used to tow a barge but at the time the bridge tender noticed its unusual lack of purposeful activity, he had put in a call for help.

A body was spotted from overhead by the help of a small airplane, and by two that afternoon, the body of George Knapp was retrieved from the bay near the New Pass Bridge in Sarasota through the help of seven Sea Scouts.

It was odd to notice, in the next day's paper, the small paragraph dedicated to those in George Knapp's family who survived him:

Survivors include his widow and several grown children by a first wife, who resides elsewhere.

That first wife, incidentally, was none other than Lena Mary Overacker Knapp, whom we had last seen in desperate straits, living with her youngest daughter while working in an Oregon household as a domestic servant. That was according to the 1920 census.

Lena did, though, have a story of her own for us to discover, though one divulged by peering through the cracks of what records can be currently found online. I found it curious, on her son Jackson's 1917 draft registration form, to see his response listed for the entry requiring "nearest relative." He entered "Mrs. Lena Valinger" rather than Mrs. Lena Knapp. And no, he didn't have any sisters by that name.

Granted, a digitized version of an index for Oregon marriages did show two entries for someone named Lena Knapp—in one case, Lena M. Knapp—though it doesn't show the name of the groom for either of those line items. Whenever it happened, though, we can also see that Lena was married yet another time—at an as-yet undisclosed date and location, although this 1928 petition for divorce published in The Tacoma Daily Ledger could lead us to assume a Washington location—when we turn to see her own obituary and burial information.

As it turned out, Lena did make it to Florida, as well. I doubt it was in the company of her first husband, George, if what was written on her son's draft registration form was correct. But she didn't exit her seventy year long life with either that first or second husband. Somewhere in Broward County, Lena passed away on September 2, 1944. Though her obituary got the spelling of her sons' surname wrong—it was rendered as Knapt—it at least gave us more information than we could glean from the unfortunate George Knapp's memorial over a decade earlier.

Funeral services were held Monday at the Hollywood mortuary for Mrs. Lena Mary Curtice, 70, who died Saturday. Burial was in Dania Cemetery. Mrs. Curtice is survived by her husband, Bert E. Curtice of Hollywood; two daughters: Mrs. Mable Gillingan of Bingham, Washington; Mrs. Dorothy Goolsby of Hollywood; four sons: Arthur Knapt of Tacoma, Washington; Jack Knapt of Portland, Oregon; Paul Knapt of Hollywood; and George Knapt of Miami.

About Arthur

We found big brother Arthur Knapp, posing with his baby brother Peter—alias Jackson Harlowe Knapp—in an abandoned family photo from 1899. The photo, after an unexplained hundred and twenty year journey, surfaced in an antique store in Sonora, California—pretty much a seven hundred twenty mile trip from where the picture was taken in Kelso, Washington.

As we learned yesterday, Arthur and Peter, er, Jackson were sons of George and Lena Overacker Knapp. Arthur was the couple's second-born child and oldest son, born in Washington state in 1893. It was Arthur who, in 1910, garnered two entries in the census records—one in the Portland, Oregon, household of his parents, and another along with his father as laborers in a railroad construction camp about one hundred miles on the other side of Mount Hood. Granted, they could have left home for work the day after the April 18 enumeration in town, and arrived at the Lyle Gap work camp before the head count there on April 25. But there is more to that story, I suspect.

Curiously, when Arthur registered for the draft in either 1917 or 1918—the date is nearly illegible on the digitized copy of his registration (though we do learn from elsewhere that he enlisted on July 28, 1917)—he reported being married, although Washington state records show the actual date of the marriage he claimed as his first was August 22, 1920. Interestingly, that same draft registration card indicated that his mother and a sister were solely dependent on him for their support.

By 1930, Arthur and his bride, the former Philena Malone, were settled in Wahkiakum County—same county where his brother Peter Jackson also resided. By then, Arthur and Philena were proud parents of a son and two daughters.

The story, after that point, gets murky. I can find neither Arthur nor Philena in the 1940 census. While there is a Mrs. Philena M. Knapp listed in the voter registration records of Los Angeles, California, as early as 1934, of course, that could be a case of mistaken identities—although, c'mon, how many Philenas do you know?! The tale may be told to us in shadow form when we find Philena's Social Security record showing she received her identification number in the state of Florida—where her father-in-law had moved—and realize that Philena's burial and Arthur's were not in the same cemetery.

Which brings us to another point: just where did Arthur's father, George Knapp, go? While Arthur and his brother Jackson remained in the Pacific Northwest, what became of George Knapp, himself? While he is not in any of the Knapp family photos I found in that Sonora antique shop, we may as well get some closure to this family's saga, by visiting the rest of the story in tomorrow's post.

Above: Close up of six year old Arthur Knapp, from a photo with his baby brother Peter (Jackson Knapp) taken in 1899 in Kelso, Washington; photo currently in possession of owner until returned to a direct descendant of the Knapp family.

Alias Jackson

The labels on the front and the back of the abandoned family photograph might have said the one year old infant was named Peter Knapp, but if that was the only clue I had to go by, in seeking to return this picture to Knapp family descendants, I wouldn't have gotten far. Fortunately, the picture, taken in a studio in Kelso, Washington, featured not one boy, but two. In addition to Peter, there was someone named Arthur Knapp, listed as six years of age in 1899. Even better, the 1900 census led us to a family in Kelso with two appropriately aged sons possessing exactly those names—the household of George and Lena Knapp.

To find Peter Knapp anywhere else, however, was a bit more challenging. Wandering through all the possible documents and resources offered through a search at Ancestry.com led me—somehow—to the Find A Grave memorial for someone who was purported to be that very same Peter Knapp. Only...his name was listed as Jackson Harlow Knapp.

The Find A Grave volunteer responsible for this memorial made a note about Jackson Knapp:

He was born with the name of Peter, but when he went to get a delayed birth certificate in Portland, Oregon, in 1943, he changed his name to Jackson, as he preferred that name.

I scrolled through the possibilities found at Ancestry to determine just when Peter Knapp might have made the change to Jackson Harlow Knapp official. It was long before 1943, apparently. True, there is a transcription of a record showing a delayed birth certificate under the name Jackson Harlow Knapp, but the image of the actual document is not available online, so I can't verify the date that was drawn up.

However, as early as the draft for the first World War—which he completed on September 12, 1918—he signed his name as Jack Harlowe Knapp.

Even before that point, he was identified with this same name, when a letter from his mother, dated June 19, 1918, was attached to his marriage license. The letter, naming Jackson Harlowe Knapp, granted parental permission for "Jack" to marry Alma Harriet Anderson in Wahkiakum County, Washington.

Peter—alias Jackson Harlowe Knapp—apparently spent the rest of his life in the Pacific Northwest. We can see him first as a young couple with his Norwegian-descent bride, Alma, boarding in a home in Walla Walla, Washington in 1920, then back to the county of their marriage in Washington to raise their young family of three sons in 1930, and then to the city of Portland in 1940, where he worked as a machinist. Our last glimpse of him was still in Portland at the time of his passing in 1968, then over the river and across the state line to Vancouver, Washington, for his burial.

That, however, is the story of just one of two people in that hundred nineteen year old photo I rescued. Tomorrow, we'll discuss the other son of George and Lena Knapp in the picture—Arthur, the one who was big brother to Peter, alias Jackson Harlowe Knapp.

Above: Photograph of one year old Peter Knapp and six year old brother Arthur Knapp, taken in Kelso, Washington, in 1899; photograph currently in possession of author until claimed by a direct descendant.

Labels I Love

There is nothing I love more, when attempting to return abandoned antique photos to family members, than to discover a picture with enough information provided to lead me merrily down a trail of discovery. Whether written on the front or the back of a picture, names, dates, and locations go a long way in helping a researcher pinpoint the subjects' identities.

So far, we've been exploring the several photos I found in a Sonora, California, antique store which all had to do with the family of William and Clara Alice Knapp. One was of William, himself. Another was of his young family. The one we viewed yesterday was a photo of one of his youngest children, a son given that same first name.

Today, though, we'll switch tracks and look at another photograph which I believe must have originally belonged to the same family to whom the other ones once belonged. This picture, too, is of Knapp family members, but to see where these two children fit into the Knapp family constellation, we'll have to step back another generation.

William Malphus Knapp, son of yet another William Knapp and his wife, Corintha White, was the eldest of several children. As we can see from the family's entry in the 1880 census, the next child in line to the eldest—William, himself—was a boy named George Harlow Knapp. Born in 1871 during that sliver of time when the Knapp family had moved north from Indiana to Michigan, George eventually left the home where the family finally settled in Kansas, and headed west.

Whatever drew him to Washington, I'm not sure, but on January 26, 1890, in Tacoma, he married Lena M. Overacker. Ten years later, the couple boasted five children—and a household full of lodgers, as well as listing, as his occupation, the position of "mill owner."

Thankfully, the census record for 1900 listed their children's names as those with which they were commonly called. If I had to rely on official designations, I might not have been able to pinpoint this Knapp family as the correct one for the subjects of the photo I was researching. You see, the photo—with identification provided characteristically right on the front—was of two children named Peter and Arthur. But to find Peter in any other records would be a task near impossible for a researcher outside the Knapp family, as we'll see tomorrow.

The portrait, taken at Hargrave's Studio in Kelso, Washington—right where the 1900 census had indicated this family lived—included a handwritten note identifying Peter Knapp "age 1 year" and Arthur Knapp "age 7 years."

Another note—this time thankfully on the reverse, rather than crowding out the composition of the picture itself—provided more information.  From that note, we learn that the photograph of Arthur and Peter was taken in 1899, at which time Arthur was six years of age, and Peter was still an infant of one year of age.

This made it fairly easy to locate the family in the 1900 census, in Cowlitz County, Washington, where the tiny city of Kelso had barely been in existence for eleven years. By that time, the Knapp family was part of a city with a population of less than seven hundred people—including, thankfully, a professional photographer.

By 1910, though, the family's story had begun to change. The family—slightly larger with the addition of two more children—was now living in Portland, Oregon. Though the Knapps were still taking in lodgers, George's occupation had changed from the lofty-sounding mill owner to teamster for an express delivery company. That, however, was according to the report provided to the census enumerator by George's wife.

In the meantime, separated from his family by Mount Hood, over one hundred miles to the southeast of Portland in a little encampment in Crook County called Lyle Gap, George Knapp was not living, as his wife reported, in Portland, but was himself a boarder in a railroad construction camp, along with his son, Arthur.

The 1920 census told a little bit more about the story, with Lena listed as a divorced woman, serving as a housekeeper in Linn County, Oregon. Her youngest child, fourteen year old daughter Dorothy, was the only Knapp family member still living with her. Her ex-husband George had likely moved, by then, to Florida. If that 1920 census entry is for the right George Knapp, none of his children had moved to join him there, either.

Tracking down what became of their son, the infant Peter Knapp from the photo I found, in particular, would have been the greatest challenge...until I discovered why that name wouldn't produce many answers.

We'll continue that discussion tomorrow, as well as introduce that photographic memory of George and Lena's two sons from 1899, back in Kelso, Oregon. But one thing is sure: I would never have been able to determine who those two boys from the picture actually were, if it hadn't been for the foresight of an unnamed someone who took the time to write a note explaining when and where the picture was taken, and who the subjects were. No matter how much of a scrawl the handwriting might be, those are the labels I most love to see.

A Knapp Family Collection

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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