About That Family Name

 

Kids can get so embarrassed by anything that makes them seem different than their friends. In the case of Marilyn Sowle Bean's husband, apparently it was his own name which embarrassed him. 

Given the name Earle, it seemed to have an extra letter at the end, a pretentious "e" which set him apart. Since Earle had also inherited another detail which made him stand apart from everyone else in school—he was born with Marfan Syndrome, causing his unusual height—he must have figured carving an "e" off his name was far more manageable than shedding a foot off his height. Why draw more attention to oneself than necessary?

Apparently, by the time he was about to turn ten, his maternal grandmother Effie Williams Woodworth had gotten wind of the egregious omission, and wrote to inform him of her displeasure. Her May 15, 1936, letter was sent to the boy barely three years after he had lost his mother—Maude, Effie's daughter—leaving him, along with his brother Sam, to be raised by his blind and deaf father and his paternal grandmother.

The letter may have started out like a typical note from a grandmother, with thanks for a Mother's Day gift he had made her, along with a report on how the weather had been in Oroville, California, where she had moved only the past March. She did not miss an opportunity to gently chide Earle and his brother for not writing her more often, then remind them that their dear departed mother's birthday was coming up a week from the next Sunday.

Then came the lecture.

Now Earle, I see you do not spell your name as it should be. Yours is a family name. That's why your mother named you Earle. Your brother's name was Merle. Please remember your name is Earle.

That last Earle was underlined for emphasis. Effie did not want Earle to miss her point. She then launched into the explanation: her paternal grandmother was an Earle—the twin sister "Merriette" Earle. You could tell she was quite proud of her family heritage—though I suspect her grandson did not appreciate the history lesson about to follow.

The Earles were very aristocratic people so you should feel honored. Your mother would wish you to spell it that way. My father's name was Eugene Earle Williams + where ever there is an Earle in our family it's spelled Earle.

Effie continued to regale her young grandson with examples of others in the extended family whose full name included Earle, then threw in a sentence about how the "Indians" in northern Wisconsin captured some of the Earle family—most of whom subsequently escaped—and then abruptly closed the letter with a cheery, "Well Earle, write again" and signed off "lovingly" as Grandma Woodworth.

I had long heard the story of how Earle had dropped that final "e" in his name over the protests of his grandmother, and now that I've received that package of Marilyn's saved letters, I now can read that note for myself. Saved after all those years, first by Earle himself, then by his wife Marilyn, eighty five years later it has finally made its way to me. Some family stories can be substantiated, but the proof doesn't always come easily.

Creative Spelling

 

Sometimes, it takes building someone else's tree before you can get down to the business of building your own.

Right now, I'm racing the calendar to see if I can find an answer to my impromptu research question for this waning month of November, but it looks like several record keeping clerks have conspired against me through their secret weapon of creative spelling.

Taking that batch of Marilyn Sowle Bean's family photos rescued from a local antique store as my cue, I'm trying to discover just who might have passed the genetic malady, Marfan Syndrome, into Marilyn's husband's family. After all, losing three close family members at young ages—not to mention several cousins in the extended family—is more than enough to make someone sit up and take notice that this family had inherited something alarming.

So far, we've pinpointed the tendency to someone in Marilyn's mother-in-law Maude Woodworth Bean's line. Of Maude's four grandparents' lines, we've already explored the Woodworth and Williams lines, finding many long-lived ancestors, but not much of significance other than the devastating deaths of Maude's sons and her brother's sons.

We've yet to explore two more lines. One, representing one of the most common surnames in the English-speaking world, we'll reserve for consideration tomorrow—if, that is, we're able to correctly pinpoint the right Smith line for that task. The other we will face today.

The challenge right now is that frustrating clerical conspiracy to employ creative spelling when certain, assured spelling eludes the hapless governmental worker. Despite that risk, let's see what we can find on Maude's maternal grandmother, Elizabeth.

We've already noted that when Maude's mother Effie Williams married her father William Woodworth, the 1890 event in Sioux City, Iowa, was recorded in the register showing Effie's father to be Eugene Williams. It was also fairly plain to decipher the handwriting for Effie's mother's given name, Elizabeth. But for Elizabeth's surname? The best I could figure was either Ferrara or Ferrard.

Finding Elizabeth in her parents' household might have been easy, had it not been for the snare of that challenging surname. It was far easier to locate "Lizzie" as the wife of Eugene Williams in Dakota Territory, where the couple had raised Maude's mother Effie and her siblings after their dad, Eugene, obtained the land following his service in the Civil War. From the 1880 census, we can calculate that Elizabeth was born about 1844. That, plus her place of birth in Illinois to parents from New York, was about all we had to go by in finding Elizabeth in her parents' household—whatever their surname might have been.

It didn't help, unfortunately, to look at Effie's siblings' marriage records. Her brother Ernest, for instance, had a marriage record written in the clearest hand one could hope for—with a mother's maiden name duly noted as "Fairfield." Hardly a name beginning with F-e-r-anything.

There was, however, this throw-away entry in the Woodworth family's household in the 1910 census. There, living in the household of her son-in-law, William Woodworth, Elizabeth Williams was included along with two others who were not part of the immediate family. One, listed simply as a lodger, was a thirty two year old single man by the name of Calvin D. Farrand. Sure, he was identified as someone renting a room at the Woodworth's place, but could there have been any other connection?

Over years of reading census records, I've seen signs of "lodgers" and "boarders" listed as such when they actually turned out to be relatives of the head of household—but of too complicated a relationship for the enumerator to be bothered with the details. Granted, I've seen some enumerations in which cousins or uncles have been listed as such, but there have also been many where that familial fact turned up for me only because I pursued a hunch.

This is one of those cases.

Step by step, I looked for an unmarried Elizabeth in census records for a "Ferrard" or "Ferrara" surname—or anything similar. All I needed was a daughter born in Illinois about 1844, with a surname that started with F. Wildcard time.

In 1860, the most recent census in which Elizabeth would have been living with her parents, I found a fifteen year old Elizabeth living in the Iowa home of one Orren Farrand—same surname as the "lodger" in future Elizabeth's son-in-law's household. Orren and his likely wife were both noted to have been born in New York.

But then, that creative spelling conspired to work against us. Reaching back to the earlier decade, the 1850 census had a scribbled seven (?) year old Elizabeth in the home of—what was that?—Orin Farnd. The only consolation was that the location in 1850 was Elizabeth's birthplace of Illinois, the two supposed parents were born in New York, and three of the other siblings' names—Abram, Franklin, and Lyman—seemed roughly to match the 1860 report. It was time to start building a tree for this possible Farrand family.

Long story short, it turns out that this Elizabeth's brother Abraham did indeed have a son named Calvin. Though his year and location of birth didn't quite match up to the 1910 report in the Woodworths' household years later, following that Calvin's line may provide additional confirmation. It was encouraging to note, in a twisted sort of way, that this family, too, had their surname's spelling creatively rendered: Ferrand. Getting ever closer to the Ferrard that started me on this search.

So, the "lodger" named Calvin Farrand in William Woodworth's 1910 household may more correctly have been identified as William's mother-in-law's nephew. I can't say I blame the enumerator for taking a shortcut in such a case. But discovering that connection still doesn't answer my question about the actual spelling of Elizabeth Woodworth's maiden name. Was it Ferrara? Ferrand? Farrand? The impossible spelling shorthand "Farnd"? Or maybe that marriage record had it correct at Fairfield and we're chasing the wrong rabbit.

Too late to have saved me this wild chase, I realized that, though the Ancestry.com collection only provides transcripts of California death records, sometimes it is well worth the effort to track down the same record at FamilySearch.org—which is exactly what I did.

There, thanks to the fact that I had signed into that website with my own account, I was apparently rewarded with not only a transcription of all the pertinent information on her death certificate, but an image of the actual record. Preserved in a clear hand, that digitized gift revealed without question what the reporting party—Effie Williams Woodworth, herself—asserted were Elizabeth's parents' names: Betsey Baker and Orin Farrand.      

Twins in the Family

 

If you stumbled upon the given name Mariet in your family history wanderings, and thought maybe, just maybe, that might be a hint to look for a twin sister named Harriet, you might be on the right track. That, at least, turned out to be the case when I tore through every resource I could find online concerning the roots of Maude Woodworth Bean's paternal grandfather, Civil War veteran Eugene Williams.

It had been easy enough to locate Eugene in the 1860 household of his father, Martin M. Williams, since he had mentioned upon enlisting in 1862 that his home was in Marcellon, Wisconsin. It was a snap to deduce that the Martin Williams household in the previous census, despite being in New York rather than Wisconsin, showed the same family embedded within the extended family of one Solomon Williams.

But what about Martin's wife, Eugene's mother? Unfortunately for our search, her name was mangled in the 1850 census by an enumerator with a frustrating scrawl and a hurried attempt at correcting what might initially have been a spelling error. No matter what the entry was in reality, the name provided in the 1860 census—Mary—certainly was not the same as what was noted in 1850.

With no marriage record online that I could see—presumably occurring in the state of New York, even though the woman was noted to have been born in Vermont—we're left to poke around every other possible detail we can find. This is where search engines like Google become our best friend.

This is also, as you'll see shortly, why I never flatly discard family traditions as mere hearsay. You never know when a story might turn out to have some shred of validity to it.

Let's look first at the problem spot which left me stymied with yet another contradicting report. A death record told me that a woman by the name of Mariet Williams had died in Woodbury County, Iowa, in 1887. At that point, her age was given as sixty four, which would put her year of birth around 1823. Her place of birth was reported to be Vermont.

All that would have led a researcher to think we were moving along swimmingly, except for one tiny detail: the death report indicated that this Mariet Williams was a single woman, not married.

Granted, Mariet is not Mary, and certainly not the same as "Margett"—and keep in mind the wildcard entered into this search of the detail of a "second wife" for Martin Williams—but we need to see what we can find on this death and burial information for Mariet Williams.

The death record in Iowa indicated burial would be at Elk Point in Dakota Territory. Looking at the cemetery information on Find A Grave for the location of Martin Williams' own burial, I did a search for Mariet Williams. There was indeed a burial for a Mariet E. Williams. Though the memorial didn't include any photograph of a headstone, it provided the location for the burial: "Grave 5, Lot 59, Block 4, Section 2." 

Location for Martin Williams' own burial? "Grave 4, Lot 59, Block 4, Section 2."

Granted, I can't vouch for that particular cemetery's layout scheme, but just on general principles, I'd say the two of them were buried next to each other. I'd call that husband and wife, wouldn't you?

Of course, there still is the question of whether this was the first wife or the second wife. Tracing Martin's daughter Frances to the end of her life to see what was noted for her mother's name doesn't really help. If Frances Williams Beggs had died in the county where she had last been living with her husband—Will County, Illinois—there still wouldn't have been a digital image of her death certificate, but at least the transcription would have been as thorough as it was when Charles Beggs had died on March 1 of 1931. By the end of that same month, Frances had apparently moved into the city of Chicago to be with her daughter Mima during her period of mourning. She died before that same month was out.

Cook County also provided transcriptions of the certificate information, but not as thorough a recounting of the deceased's life history as that of Will County. At least it included the name of the deceased's parents. According to the reporting party, "Mina" Beggs Neef, Frances' mother's maiden name was Elizabeth Morse. 

Not what we were expecting.

Could Mima have gotten her mother's information wrong? Might that have actually been the name of Frances' father's second wife? I won't say this is the first time I've seen a death certificate which included errors. But we can't just presume without a supporting argument, and that takes documentation.

First, let's reconstruct Martin Williams' timeline. According to his 1896 obituary, it reported that though he had died in Hand County, South Dakota, he had come to that location "a year or so ago" from Iowa, not directly from his former residence in Union County in Dakota Territory. Furthermore, he—but not any wife—was noted to have traveled from Sioux City to attend the 1890 wedding in Chicago of his granddaughter Addie Beggs. Sioux City, by the way, is located in Woodbury County, Iowa. And the 1890 occasion in Chicago would obviously have occurred after Martin had lost his wife, since Mariet died in Woodbury County in 1887.

What I'm lacking, in the face of this possible error in reporting on Mariet's daughter's—not to mention her own—death record, is any further information on who Mariet was. It would have helped to retrieve Martin and Mariet's marriage record, for instance, or any detail on Mariet's maiden name, but online resources were not providing what I was seeking.

Though I am death on copying other people's family trees, I certainly am not averse to exploring the way markers on someone else's well-documented genealogy. That is exactly what I did, looking for Martin and Mariet Williams as a family grouping. Someone had posted a link to a page in the 1888 publication, The Earle Family: Ralph Earle and His Descendants which, incredibly, included just what I was seeking: details on one Mariet Earle who had married a Martin M. Williams in 1844.

And yes, she had a twin sister named Harriet Earle.

The funny thing is, I'd known about that Earle surname for almost as long as I've done family history research. It all goes back to a story told to me by Marilyn Sowle Bean, the woman whose rescued photos prompted this month's research project. In one of the first successful genealogical interviews I ever conducted, years ago, Marilyn had told me that her husband's name was actually Earle Raymond Bean, but that he felt awkward about what seemed to be the pretentious spelling—Earle instead of the more common Earl—and had informally dropped the "e" from his given name.

What Marilyn never mentioned, but I suspected, was that "Earle" was actually a family name—in other words, a surname from somewhere back in the family's history. I had no idea it would take this long—so many losses before that one win at the antique store last spring—before I'd be prompted to actually find where that family name fit into the picture.

Now, though Marilyn and her family are no longer here for me to share this victory, I can see that the Earle surname would have provided eligibility to join the Daughters of the American Revolution through the patriot Thaddeus Earle, Mariet Earle Williams' paternal grandfather. It turns out that Marilyn's own mother-in-law Maude Woodworth Bean's Earle ancestry had a long heritage in this country. All I can do now is wonder if she ever knew.    

Oh, Messy

 

Pinning one's research hopes upon the life events of one solitary person can become disappointing. Take the case of our Maude Woodworth Bean's maternal grandfather, Civil War veteran Eugene Williams of Marcellon, Wisconsin. Sure enough, we were able to find Eugene as a fourteen year old in the household of his father Martin in the 1860 census, but that one solution opened the door to another research problem: did we, indeed, follow the right Martin Williams through his life's trajectory?

Of course, it didn't help that Martin's Find A Grave memorial, for his burial in what used to be called Dakota Territory, led us to three different dates of death for that one man. Seeing that his obituary, which was posted on his memorial, mentioned a daughter by name, I followed that clue to see whether any hints were strewn along her life's path to help me piece together the right Williams family. (Of course, along the way, I kept my eyes open for any signs of Marfan Syndrome, my other research goal for this month.)

Though Martin Williams' obituary did not mention his son by name—that would be Eugene, if we are correct in our assumption—it did identify his daughter's married name. However, Frances Williams—or Francis, as it was often written in records—was not a helpful subject in our quest to confirm this Williams line.

From the start, records led me to wonder whether there were two girls given that name in the Martin Williams family. For one thing, discovering the Martin Williams family in the 1850 household of Solomon Williams in New York—presumably Martin's father—made it clear that there were two children likely to be his: Eugene, age four, and Frances, who had been born in New York ten months prior to that July 25, 1850, enumeration.

When we jump ahead ten years to the 1860 census, though, we find the same family of Martin Williams, as we said before, living in Marcellon, Wisconsin, with Eugene being a predictable fourteen years of age (do the math), and Frances showing up as expected at ten years of age. Only problem: Frances' place of birth was not given as New York, as we had previously seen, but as Wisconsin.

To make matters worse, the handwriting on the 1850 census rendered the child's mother's name something like Margett, while the 1860 census read clearly, Mary. Could this have been the second wife mentioned in Martin's obituary, years later? But Mary was precisely ten years older than Margett's stated age in the previous record.

Other records noted Frances' place of birth as in Wisconsin, as well, so we can't simply discount that one entry as a fluke of recordkeeping. 

Following Frances' history to glean any hint that we might be on the right track, we can see she and Charles Beggs were married in November of 1869, thanks to the 1870 census. Encouragingly, they lived in Elk Point, county seat for Union County in what was still Dakota Territory, same as our Frances' brother Eugene did. But perhaps the rugged life in Dakota Territory made recordkeeping a challenge, for I've found no digitized record of their marriage online—at least not the type to provide names of parents.

It wasn't until Charles and Frances Beggs' oldest daughter was married—by this time, the Beggs family was living in Chicago—that I found the slightest connection to the Williams family once again. From a wedding announcement published in The Daily Inter Ocean on December 11, 1890, we learn that among the out-of-town guests for the event was M. M. Williams, by then of Sioux City, Iowa. Significantly, while other guests were mentioned as "Mr. and Mrs." the Williams entry had no mention of a wife. Could this have indicated Martin Williams was present at the wedding, following the death of his wife?

Of course, if I could have located any records for Martin Williams' son's passing—with the helpful addition of parents' names—it would easily have tied the family together for us (or told us we had the wrong people altogether). As it is, this means we still need to search further.

In the midst of this mess, though, pops up one more question: no matter which woman was the "second wife" of Martin Williams, where had either of the wives been buried? For surely someone must have become the incentive for the family to return Martin's body to Elk Point Cemetery from his latest home in Hand County, South Dakota.

Actually, there was someone supposedly buried in that cemetery, with the name of Mariet Williams. Only problem: a record of her death indicated that she was not a married woman, but single at the time of her passing. Talk about messy: was that record correct?

There are simply some research questions which demand a search of records which are not yet—if they ever will be—digitized. Barring the ability to hop a plane and fly to South Dakota, though, there may be a few more clues to trace so that we can piece together a coherent story. 

A Rant About Really Old Newspapers

 

Why can't archived newspaper collections contain the complete holdings of a given newspaper? What's up with gaps in publication dates? Why does the very date I want happen to fall in the cracks of those missing editions? And more to the point, what do you do when you are researching a name as common as Martin Williams, and run into not one but two conflicting reports about death—but can't locate the original report to provide confirmation? 

Here's the situation. One helpful Find A Grave volunteer indicated there was a Martin Williams buried in Elk Point Cemetery, South Dakota, after his supposed death in 1882. A record of the order for a headstone for this Civil War veteran reported "M. M. Williams" had died on April 1, 1897, and sent the completed marker to the same Elk Point Cemetery.

As if to clear the air on this research dilemma, yet another Find A Grave volunteer transcribed an obituary for a Martin M. Williams who had died in nearby Hand County, South Dakota, but was buried at Elk Point Cemetery on February 3, 1896.

If all three of these entries were concerning the same Martin M. Williams, which date was correct? My tendency was to go with the newspaper report, but we all know how easily editorial errors can slip into newsprint.

The solution? Find the actual newspaper edition to see for myself. That, however, is easier planned than executed. The trouble with archived newspaper collections is that no one repository seems to have the entire breadth of a publication's history.

My first stop was to check Chronicling America, the U.S. Library of Congress collection of newspapers published across the nation throughout its history. Using the website's search engine, I could locate the publication in question easily enough—I was looking for The Pioneer Press, printed in the city of Miller, county seat of Hand County, South Dakota.

The problem was, I couldn't isolate the specific edition identified by the Find A Grave volunteer, printed on February 6, 1896. Smart me: I thought I'd experiment with using the website's advanced search function, but it told me the one thing I've become accustomed to discovering.

That date was not in the Library of Congress collection.

I could, of course, go one by one through each of the companies I subscribe to for archived newspapers—not to mention the resources for accessing newspapers for free—but I've done that before and know how frustrating it can be. So I cut to the chase and brought my question to Google—the search engine, not the newspaper collection. No more navigating gaps in collections for me.

As it turned out, GenealogyBank provided my answer, confirming the wording of the text added to Martin Williams' Find A Grave memorial. In addition, I found a "Card of Thanks" inserted below Martin Williams' obituary, signed by Mrs. Williams and Mrs. Beggs, stating

We tender our sincere thanks to the many friends who have so kindly rendered assistance and extended their sympathy during the last sickness of our beloved husband and father.

The one regrettable detail in finding Martin Williams' obituary—and confirming it with the digitized image of the original publication—was to see the list of his survivors. According to the Pioneer Press, Martin Williams left "a second wife, a son and daughter to mourn his loss." While the article never mentions the son's name, nor Martin's wife's name—that, supposedly, would be improper to do during that era—it does inform us that the daughter was a "Mrs. Beggs of Chicago."

Whoever that "Mrs. Beggs of Chicago" turns out to be, she becomes the key to confirming whether this Martin Williams was one and the same as the father of Eugene Williams, maternal grandfather of our Maude Williams Woodworth.

 

Coincidences

 

Sometimes, when researching ancestors, all the details seem to fall into place a bit too conveniently. With too many coincidences. That's when I hesitate to presume I've found the right person.

Right now, we're trying to trace the line of Maude Woodworth Bean's maternal grandfather, Eugene Williams. It seems reasonable to assume that, coming from a place called Marcellon in Wisconsin before the Civil War, Eugene would fit into the household of the only Williams family I could find in that tiny town. That household represented the family of Martin Williams who, within the scant space of one decade, led us back to New York and the household—possibly—of his own father, Solomon Williams.

That may seem more like magic than meticulous research, and my brain screams out, "Not so fast!" There's got to be another way to double check this information.

Double checking is always good. Genealogists always need to be on the lookout for name twins—and certainly resist the urge to be lulled into complacency by coincidences. I went back over my records for Eugene Williams, and began noticing something unusual. It seemed that for the rest of his life, wherever Eugene showed up, there would be this guy named Martin Williams, too.

I found the first sign in a record of all persons "subject to do military duty" in the area of Wisconsin where Eugene had enlisted during the Civil War. This record was a "consolidated list" and it included the name of one Martin M. Williams, forty one year old farmer from New York. At that age, could he have served, along with his sixteen year old son Eugene?

It took some searching to find more detail. Though he lived in Wisconsin at the time, the only service record I could find was for a Martin M. Williams who, according to muster rolls archived through the Illinois Secretary of State (searched under "Williams, Martin M."), served in Company C of the Ninth Illinois Cavalry. Strangely, he was mustered in on March 17, 1865, not in Wisconsin, but in Chicago, Illinois. Seven months later in Selma, Alabama, Martin was mustered out.

That scenario seemed quite a stretch for me, despite the age given for this Martin agreeing with what I had found so far for Eugene's dad, so I looked further. Noticing that, in the land record for Eugene Martin, right alongside his record was a mention of someone named Martin Williams. Yes, in the same location in Union County of what is now South Dakota, too close a coincidence to have been two strangers. In the same tiny place of less than four thousand people. That couldn't be a coincidence again, could it?

Whoever this Martin Williams was, he remained a farmer in Union County through the 1880 census—and, incidentally, served as his area's census enumerator. By then, his son (maybe) Eugene and his wife and children had moved back into town, to the county seat of Elk Point, and then, over the years since, "back east" to Iowa, before moving all the way out to California.

Tracing Martin Williams after the 1880 census was enough of a challenge to make me wonder whether he might have had a double, after all. A Find A Grave memorial at the Elk Point Cemetery for one M. M. Williams gave the date of his death as March 2, 1882—but a record of the order for Martin Williams' military headstone showed the date of death to be April 1, 1897.

Helpfully—at least I hope—a Find A Grave volunteer transcribed an obituary for a Martin Williams which gave the time of his passing as February 1, in a newspaper published in 1896. That obituary indicated that Martin and his second wife had moved from Union County, possibly first to Iowa before returning to South Dakota and settling in Hand County—or was that yet another Martin Williams who had served in the war and then settled in Dakota Territory? A search for the actual newspaper article is in order to double check, once again.

Too many such coincidences flying at me this quickly make me want to dig in my heels and look more deeply for clues to sort out all these identities. And yet, as I do so, I discover even more ways to doubt the records on the extended Williams family.

 

Above: Copy of card indicating the order for a military headstone for Martin M. Williams, to be sent to Elk Point in South Dakota, courtesy Ancestry.com. 

Effie Aurilla's Great-Grandmother

 

Our task, as family historians, is to push back ever so tentatively through the years from where our known ancestors used to live to their earlier records. So far, in exploring the Williams line of Maude Woodworth Bean's ancestry, we traced her mother, Effie Aurilla from her 1890 marriage to William Woodworth in Iowa to records of her earlier years in the Dakota Territory household of her father, Eugene Williams. But what about Eugene's earlier years?

Despite Eugene's claim to have been born in New York, we found a possible candidate for this young man in the 1860 home of Martin and Mary Williams of Marcellon, Wisconsin. Since Eugene was born in 1846, I wanted to see if I could find him in the 1850 census. Sure enough, there was a family which included a four year old boy by that name—but the family lived in New York, not Wisconsin.

Leading off at the top of the page for a town in Allegany County called Centerville, I found the impossible scrawl of a hasty enumerator who had jumbled ten people with two different surnames into the same household. The head of the household was fifty five year old Solomon Williams, but in addition to baby Frances and her four year old companion Eugene, the household included a ninety one year old man by the name of Philo Hawley and a female companion of the same surname trailing Philo by only a few years.

Somewhere in that same household was the name we are looking for—Martin Williams—exactly ten years younger than the age we had found him at in the 1860 census so many miles to the west of this New York location. Still, that would not be too alarming, considering our Eugene had claimed through most of his life that he had been born in New York. Perhaps this was home and Solomon was Martin's father.

What attracted my attention to this household was not just the jumble of names or the spread of ages, but the particular name of the woman listed right after the line for the head of this household. Her name—and I'm presuming this would turn out to be Martin's mother and, eventually, Effie's great-grandmother—was Aurilla.

Now, before you go regaling me with warnings about coincidences, let's just take a look at one thing—or at least as close a thing as we can get to actual documentation. Consider the name Aurilla. How often do you see a name like that? 

Just in case, I did a little exploring. I checked the name data tucked away in a fun little corner of the U.S. Social Security website. For the earliest year I could find listed on the site—the decade of the 1880s—Aurilla did not even make a showing in the list of the top two hundred names for girls. Looking at this from another angle, for a baby girl's name in 1885, the earliest date I could bring up on another website, the name Aurilla ranked 881 in popularity for that year. If families routinely named their babies after older relatives, those stats echo a quite limited number of honorary namesakes.

That said, while I consider this to be a promising sign that we are on to something with the household of Solomon Williams, you know we can't just stop there. We'll have to do some more exploring to confirm this hypothesis that Eugene Williams' dad was the Martin Williams who used to call Centerville—and more importantly, the household of Solomon and Aurilla Williams—home.

Connecting the Dots Between Generations

 

Sometimes, it takes a leap of faith to connect the dots between generations—or a little guess work followed by thorough research and a lot of explanation. Finding Eugene Williams' roots may be one of those instances.

It has been a rather routine route to connect the family of Marilyn Sowle Bean—former owner of the photographs I got to rescue from a local antique shop—with its roots, but only to a point. Earlier this month, we located Marilyn's mother-in-law, Maude Woodworth Bean, in the home of her parents, William and Effie Woodworth. We also realized that the Marfan Syndrome which had struck down so many members of the extended family seemed to center in the branch associated with the Woodworth family, so we've been exploring each side of that family for clues from previous generations.

Last week, we focused on Effie's line, the Williams family, and discovered that her father, Eugene, had served as a very young recruit in the Union Army during the Civil War. Given the many records of the Civil War, it was fairly straightforward to trace Eugene Williams from the point of his August 15, 1862, enlistment at Portage, Wisconsin—but where was he before that point?

His records from the last years of his life at a Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers in California indicated that Eugene Williams had started life in New York state, but where had he been living when he enlisted in Portage, Wisconsin? Williams is a fairly common surname, making me doubt the success of a point-blank search.

If the soldier who died as Eugene Williams had kept that same name his entire life, and if the information he gave at the end of his life—that he was born in New York about 1846—kept constant throughout all the other reports he provided in his lifetime, it turns out there was only one possibility in the state of Wisconsin for such a man.

That man, at least in time for the 1860 census, lived with his parents and sister in the town of Marcellon, Wisconsin. Fortunately for us, Marcellon is a town of barely one thousand people—but that is now. Back in 1860, the entire Columbia County, where Marcellon is located, contained twenty four thousand residents, making it quite possible that there could be a name twin lurking in those numbers. For this, we tread tentatively.

Right now, our task will be to examine the possibility that the Eugene Williams found in the household of Martin and Mary Williams is one and the same as Effie's father Eugene who died in California in 1914. Sometimes, to connect those dots—and to be sure we've followed the right line—we need to explore lines which may, upon closer scrutiny, turn out to be false leads. We'll take some time this week before the holidays to examine this particular household of Martin and Mary Williams from Marcellon.

Inset above: Excerpt from the 1860 U.S. Census for the town of Marcellon in Wisconsin, showing the Martin Williams household; image courtesy Ancestry.com.

Home From Alabama to Wisconsin — and Beyond

 

The early wars in American history, whether Revolutionary War, War of 1812, or the much later Civil War, may have pointed to one detail held in common between them: their soldiers, once returning home, seemed more likely to have caught the wanderlust to move on to other lands. I've traced my colonial roots moving from New England to Virginia, then beyond to South Carolina and Georgia. And my husband's War of 1812 ancestors often took their travels during years of service as cue to move west from Pennsylvania or Ohio.

In the case of Eugene Williams, at his youthful age at enlistment in the Union army, it may come as no surprise to learn that once he was discharged in Alabama at the close of the Civil War, after returning home to Wisconsin, he had the urge to travel further onward.

One factor which made that option a possibility was the availability of land. However, while soldiers from previous wars may have had the option of taking up bounty lands or land grants, those who served in the Civil War did not exactly have that opportunity, as bounty land was not given out after 1855. Still, land was there for the taking, even in the 1860s onward, and that is apparently what enticed Eugene to roam westward from Wisconsin.

Genealogists are particular keen on locating documents such as bounty land records, because for research purposes, they count as a double whammy. Not only does discovery of such a record pinpoint the ancestor by location and time period, but provide reference to military service.

On a hunch, I checked the General Land Office records at the Bureau of Land Management website for any sign of Eugene Williams after the war. Keep in mind, I had found Eugene Williams first by tracing his line backwards in time from his descendants—from Maude Woodworth's mother Effie Williams to her father, Eugene. In that journey, I discovered that in the 1880 census, Effie was living with her family in what was then considered Dakota Territory, in Union County, which is now part of the state of South Dakota.

Sure enough, there was a property record for someone named Eugene Williams in that very county—Union County. The property size was eighty acres, and by 1874, it was all his. How long he held on to the property, though, is hard to determine just now. I can tell by the time of the 1880 census that Eugene and his family were living in Elk Point City—as small a city as it must have been, considering the population for the entire county at the time—and Eugene was listed not as a farmer but as a laborer. By 1890, when his daughter Effie was married to William Woodworth, the Williams family was listed as living in Sioux City, Iowa.

Still, discovery of land records for this veteran of the Civil War provides one more way to track his life's trajectory, as well as that of his daughters and sons. As every genealogist knows, though, yet another step is calling out to us, to answer the question of where this Civil War veteran came from, before his decision to enlist, back in Wisconsin at the start of the war.  

On to the Bright and Shiny

 

Some research tasks may seem rather perfunctory, especially the deeper we genealogists dig into the documentation. On the contrary, in the case of my research goal for this month, inspired by recovering Marilyn Sowle Bean's photograph collection from a local antique store, I've been attempting to pinpoint the line in her son's pedigree from which he inherited the genetic syndrome which eventually caused his death. With such a mission, the mood can sometimes turn somber, so it's no surprise that I yearn for a diversion. Stumbling upon a brief mention in another obituary caught my attention, and before I knew it, I was off chasing the kind of detail that family historians call a Bright Shiny Object.

The explanation yesterday served merely as the set up for today's pitch: background information to provide perspective on what I found regarding Maude Woodworth Bean's maternal grandfather, Eugene Williams. Now that we've established that connection, it's on to the Bright Shiny Object which pulled me away from this month's research goal.

The BSO was actually a line buried in the 1964 obituary for Maude's mother, Effie Williams. Effie, in turn, was daughter of the man we discussed yesterday, Eugene Williams. Effie had married her teenaged sweetheart William Woodworth in 1890, who had traveled home to Iowa to claim his bride and return to his family's new home in southern California. When William died in 1928, it didn't take Effie long to pack up the family's remaining belongings and move north to be closer to her oldest daughter Nieva.

Nieva had, by the time of her father's death, married, birthed two children, moved to Fresno where she and her husband Fred Searcey welcomed two more children—then lost one—and apparently divorced. Not quite one month after William Woodworth's death, Nieva was married again, this time to Joel Chamberlain.

Perhaps in all the turmoil, it seemed a reasonable move for Effie to head to Fresno to help her daughter with her young family. Whatever the reason was, we learn from Effie's obituary in 1964 that she had been a resident of Fresno since 1930.

There was one other detail to learn from that newspaper entry. Though the obituary was far less a biographical sketch than was her husband's in 1928, it provided one fact I hadn't gleaned from any other source. After mentioning that Effie was born in Jefferson in what is now the state of South Dakota, the article added this point:

She was a member of the Daughters of Union Veterans of the Civil War, Camp No. 8.

You can be sure a statement like that turned into a Bright Shiny Object for a lineage society junkie like me. Finding that, I was off, searching the website of the Daughters of Union Veterans for any sign of their member Effie Williams Woodworth—or at least a token entry honoring her Civil War veteran father.

I found nothing. No sign, even, of "Camp No. 8"—or any explanation to learn how to convert that old terminology to the current usage of "tents" for chapters.

Could that mention in the obituary just have been a family myth? I've learned it is not uncommon for families to pass along romanticized stories of their ancestors, and perhaps I had just stumbled upon such an example. Whether Effie was a member of the Daughters of Union Veterans, I couldn't say from an initial search, but yesterday's exploration into the records of Eugene Williams' last years showed clearly that he was being provided medical services as if, as a veteran, he had been entitled to them. What else could I find to support that statement?

To their credit, the Daughters of Union Veterans included a helps page on their website. Though their website also provided a tutorial for how to search a second website for veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic, the only Williams entries I could find were for other individuals. Still, the tutorial indicated the possibility that more photographs and biographical sketches would be added in the future—in other words, this was far from a complete listing. There had to be more information to confirm whether Eugene Williams had, indeed, served where his last records reported he had.

Sure enough, taking this question to the search engines—after all, what is a Bright Shiny Object for, if not to pursue?—there were several resources to confirm his involvement in the Union army. Prime among them was not only Eugene's application for a pension based on his service, but his widow's request for benefits after his death. His July 1890 original filing likely followed his attendance at his Company's reunion meeting in Milwaukee at the end of the previous August. The reason his name was included in the printed program for the 1907 reunion—as not in attendance—was likely because he and his wife, Elizabeth, had made the long journey to live in California recently enough that his address was still reported, in error, to have been in Sioux City, Iowa.

So what was Eugene Williams' Civil War story? Enlisting August 15, 1862, at Portage, Wisconsin, he served as a private in Company C of the 23rd regiment of the Wisconsin Infantry. Sure enough, thanks to a reprint of the names of men in that regiment posted at Internet Archive, we learn Eugene Williams was then a resident of Marcellon, Wisconsin, only about ten miles to the east of the town where he enlisted—a valuable clue in tracing his earlier history.

As to his experiences during the war, we don't have the privilege of preserved letters sent home like some researchers have found, but there are ample resources to trace the movements and duties of his regiment from that point until the close of the war. Wikipedia includes a brief entry on the 23rd regiment, and the wiki at FamilySearch.org provides an overview, complete with referrals to other resources. A website called the Civil War Archive provides a brief history of each regiment from each state, including Eugene's regiment from Wisconsin, and the National Park Service website includes an overview, as well. The Wisconsin Historical Society website does the same for those companies from their own state.

That whirlwind tour of available resources to trace the movements of Eugene Williams' comrades in their tour of duty was far more information than I'd need to just confirm basic details of his life, of course, but hey, this is a Bright Shiny Object, and I'm a history buff. Information is out there, if we want to learn—and are willing to test the search waters with available technological tools.

All told, at the close of the war, Eugene was discharged on July 4, 1865, in the place where he had last been serving: Mobile, Alabama. From there, it was the long trip back to Wisconsin, but that was not the last stop for this nineteen year old corporal. Yet, as easy as it was to trace Eugene Williams' movements in his nearly three years of service, finding his next steps wouldn't be quite so clearly laid out.

The Gift of Governmental Documentation

 

Every so often, tracing the trajectory of an ancestor's life story leads us straight into the midst of conflict—the kind of conflict which, though unfortunate, becomes a rich source of documentation. For our American ancestors, such was the War Between the States—or, as Eugene Williams' side of the story would characterize it, the War of the Rebellion.

Eugene Williams was Maude Woodworth Bean's maternal grandfather. Though he was born in New York, his as yet uncovered story was the reason why Maude's mother, Effie Aurilla Williams, was born and raised in what was once called Dakota Territory, but spent her later years in Sioux City, Iowa, where she met her future husband, William Woodworth.

For the young couple Effie and William, from the point of their wedding in 1890, it was off to California and the adventure of a new life together. It wasn't long, however, before Eugene and his wife Elizabeth followed their daughter's path. And with that move came the gift of governmental documentation which allows us a clearer glimpse into the wanderings of Effie's father.

Eugene and Elizabeth Williams were still residing in Sioux City by the time of the 1900 census, but by December 14, 1904, Eugene was admitted to a National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers—but not in Iowa. His admission to the facility was due to heart disease, and the records indicating this also revealed that, prior to entry at the Home, the couple had been living in Irwindale, a town not far from the southern California home of their daughter and son-in-law, the Woodworths. The 1910 census revealed the identity of that National Home as the "Pacific Branch" located in Malibu township in Los Angeles county.

From the scant entries on the page of Eugene's record at the Home, we gain everything from a physical description—blue eyes, fair complexion, height of five feet and eight inches—to the cause of his death on May 11, 1914. Though a veteran's marker was supposedly placed on his grave at the Los Angeles National Cemetery—at least, according to transcribed records included at Ancestry.com—there is no photograph of such featured on his memorial at Find A Grave.

That, however, is not the information I'm keen to glean at this point, though it does need to be checked. What I'm grateful to find in that same record of his admission to the National Home was the specific details of his service in the Civil War. Learning that on August 15, 1862, Eugene Williams enlisted to serve as a private at Portage, Wisconsin, along with the details on the company he was assigned to, becomes my springboard to follow his fate from that point until the time of his discharge at the close of the war.

Details such as those afforded by this government record provide us entrance into a well-stocked inventory of historical details—the macro-history through which this micro-history traveled.

And that recounting of Maude's grandfather brings us to our stepping off point tomorrow in exploring my latest discovery in that research weakness called Bright Shiny Object Syndrome.     

What About the Williams Line?

 

Sometimes, family history research takes the form of speed searching. That certainly was the case when I took a whirlwind tour through the Williams line of Maude Woodworth Bean's maternal grandfather. My goal—the overarching goal of this month's research—is to see which line related to the Woodworths might have passed along the Marfan Syndrome which manifested itself in Maude's sons, nephews, and even grandson.

Speed searching through the paternal line of Maude's mother Effie Aurilla Williams didn't point to any lives tragically cut short in their prime—although, oddly enough, there were a couple spouses who did die at a relatively young age. However, one unexpected discovery emerged as I read through the marriage announcements and obituaries for the various Williams relatives.

Effie's brother Arthur Williams had three sons, one of whom—Ray—held a bachelor's degree in music and was noted to have served as soloist at his younger brother's wedding. (Considering this musical bent in the family, I couldn't help but wonder whether that youngest brother's name—he often went by "A. Minor Williams"—wasn't an inside joke in the family.)

The mention of musical talent in the family caught my attention for two reasons. First, the former owner of the photographs I had rescued from a local antique shop, Marilyn Sowle Bean, had a musically talented son, herself. That was the son who lost his life to Marfan Syndrome.

Then, too, in Marilyn's photographs was a picture of her brother-in-law—Sam, the poodle trainer for the Ice Follies, who also died of Marfan Syndrome—playing his guitar and singing with friends at an informal evening gathering. The family had always left me the impression that somehow such well-developed talents as this were a hallmark of the syndrome, but here was an example of musicality minus malady.

While the propensity to perform artistically may have been passed down to Marilyn's son and brother-in-law from the Williams' line, in my rapid-fire race through the Williams pedigree, it didn't appear there was any sign of Marfan Syndrome in that side of the family.

However, as often happens in such searches, there were a few other details of interest that I'd like to pause and examine. Call it the Bright Shiny Object Syndrome if you will, but before we judge such a dalliance, let's just call it productive exploration and grant a day's lenience to explore a bit more about the Williams line.

Above: Photograph of Maude Woodworth Bean's son Sam playing the guitar at an informal outdoor gathering; undated picture from the collection of Marilyn Sowle Bean.

Maude's Mom

 

It may have been a stash of family photographs found in a local antique shop which prompted me to tell the story of their previous owner, Marilyn Sowle Bean, but it was the tragic legacy bequeathed upon Marilyn's husband, brother-in-law and, eventually, her own son which has me searching through Marilyn's mother-in-law's family tree.

Maude Woodworth Bean apparently was a carrier of a once-deadly disease known as Marfan Syndrome, the cause of the untimely deaths of the men in the Bean family. Prompted by that—plus the serendipitous discovery of those family pictures—I've been trawling through the Bean pedigree to see if I could pinpoint which branch of the family might have contributed the unfortunate tendency.

We've already explored the paternal Bean family briefly, but having discovered the same malady in the descendants of Maude's brother's family, we've lately been seeking signs in Maude's own Woodworth family. Though over a century ago there were some childhood deaths on the Woodworth side, there certainly were also some long-lived relatives, as well. But what about Maude's mom? We need to explore that branch of Maude's story, as well.

It was thanks to Maude's father's obituary—a personal history encased within a funeral announcement—that we can glean the timeline of when William Woodworth married his wife. Though as a teenager, William had moved to southern California with his parents, Lafayette and Eliza Smith Woodworth, he did not forget the sweetheart he had left behind in Sioux City, Iowa. He returned there to marry her on October 27, 1890, and bring her home with him to Covina, California.

From the actual record of their marriage, we learn that William's bride—eventually, Maude's mother—was named Effie A. Williams. Though I've been able, from other family records, to determine that the middle initial "A" stood for Aurilla, I have yet to discover any other first name than what seems to be more nickname than formal given name.

According to the Sioux City marriage record, Effie was twenty years of age at her wedding, having said her nuptial vows on the same day as her birthday. However, from other records, it looks like she was actually nineteen at the point when she said "I do."

There was another discrepancy on the marriage register in Sioux City which caused a bit more research difficulty than the year of Effie's birth. Her father's name—Eugene—might have been clearly inscribed in the register, but her mother's maiden name looked like Elizabeth Ferrard. Or was it Ferrara?

Elizabeth it may have been—we can see that thirty years later in Elizabeth's own obituary. Unfortunately, though Mrs. Williams' obituary named her pallbearers and even the names of the soloists rendering her favorite hymns at the funeral, not one mention was made of the deceased's survivors, other than the daughter—"Mrs. W. C. Woodworth"—in whose home she had passed. It took quite a bit of exploration to realize that neither Ferrard nor Ferrara was her actual maiden name.

To explore the possibility that Marfan Syndrome may have made its appearance in Effie's family, rather than Maude's paternal Woodworth line, of course we don't need to start with her mother's pedigree. We can search first among the Williams kin. That will buy me more time to explore the possibilities for Elizabeth's maiden name. In the meantime, we'll examine what we can find on the paternal side of Maude's mother's family.

 

Above: Inset from register of marriages from Woodbury County, Iowa, showing the October 1890 entry representing Effie A. Williams, bride of William Woodworth; courtesy Ancestry.com.

Missed by Moments

 

Do you ever discover—only too late to do anything about it right now—that the place you're passing by once held significance for your family history?

Too late to reroute plans now, I've just discovered that not only does a location barely half an hour's drive from my overnight stop represent the land farmed by particular members of the town's "pioneer" settlers—Maude Woodworth's parents and paternal grandparents—but that its history is apparently well preserved by the region's own historical society.

Yes, unfortunately, I and my hard-working husband are headed in an entirely different direction and are on a timetable. Rest assured, I've already written yet another "note to self" to contact the Covina Valley Historical Society to see what they might have contained in their collection regarding the Woodworth family. I may have missed by moments the decision point for visiting the Society's archived collection today, but there will be another trip in the future.

It was from one of those obituaries we all wish we could find more of that I gleaned a fairly complete history of Maude Woodworth Bean's parents. After her father's passing in 1928, the Covina Argus published an informative obituary for the "Well Known Valley Pioneer." From that came a straightforward timeline of William C. Woodworth's life.

Maude lost her father on May 22, 1928, when she was thirty years of age. Granted, by then, she was married to Samuel Bean, but she doubtless was still close to her father, with whom she had claimed a fairly close relationship before she left to attend the California School for the Blind in northern California.

At the time of his passing, W. C. Woodworth was sixty years old—a respectable age, given the time period in which he lived. Though his obituary gave no hint of the illness which caused his death, it is doubtful it would have been related to the Marfan Syndrome which later felled two of his grandsons at a much younger age. Still, the obituary mentioned that three of his children predeceased him, a clue to follow next week.

The obituary also revealed that William Woodworth came to California with his parents in 1886, settling on "the ranch on Vincent Street" in Covina which eventually became his responsibility for years, until it became the property of the Reynolds family. Finding a plat map of the region will help bring that picture to life, as "Vincent Street" has undoubtedly undergone massive changes since that bucolic era.

Soon after the Woodworth family moved to California, William returned to his former home in Sioux City, Iowa, to seek the hand of Effie Aurilla Williams in marriage in the fall of 1890. Yet even Sioux City had only been his residence for three years, as the family came there from the former town of Bristol in Kenosha County, Wisconsin, where William was born, twenty five years before his wedding.

As obituaries often do, William's last mention in the Covina newspaper was well endowed with names of surviving family members, as well as giving honor to his by-then deceased parents, Lafayette and Eliza Woodworth. This will give us working orders to help delve further into the question of whether Marfan Syndrome made its appearance in the lines of any of Maude's siblings or ancestors as it had in her own children. We'll take a closer look at the details next week. 

 

Clues From Maude's Own Story

 

Though Maude Woodworth died long before Marilyn Bean could ever have met her, the reason why so many people in Marilyn's family subsequently died at a young age may be encapsulated in Maude's own brief story. That likely was also the reason why Maude's likeness did not show up in the photo collection I rescued from Marilyn's sold belongings.

Marilyn Bean's mother-in-law, Maude, had married the most unlikely of eligible bachelors. Samuel William Bean had been born perfectly healthy, and would probably have gone on to become a successful businessman like his twin brother, except for one chance mishap in his teens. Though the family passed down two conflicting stories on the event, for whatever reason, we know that Sam had been injured by a flying object striking him in the eye.

In that era pre-dating the advent of antibiotics—Sam was born in 1896—the infection which began in his eye spread to the other eye, and eventually also to his ears. All told, the injury rendered the teenaged Sam both blind and deaf, a devastating blow to anyone.

It was at the California school for the blind and deaf that Sam Bean eventually met Maude Woodworth. When they were both in their early twenties, the story of their 1921 marriage was carried by newspapers across the country—as far away, for instance, as Alabama and Connecticut.

To think that their two surviving sons—Sam junior arriving later that same year, and twins Earle and the short-lived infant Merle in 1926—might have been afflicted with any malady, a reasonable guess for anyone not knowing the family's story might have been to think of vision problems. After all, the reason that brought both Sam and Maude to the same school in their teen years was their loss of eyesight.

That was not the case, though knowing more about Maude's family might have made answering such a question more complicated. A newspaper article I found through the index to the Redwood City, California, Schellens Collection, a clipping from the January 13, 1921, edition of the city's newspaper, the Standard, mentioned that Maude became interested in teaching the blind when she was a girl growing up on her father's orange grove in southern California. Her father, William C. Woodworth, was also blind, and in her younger years, Maude had served as his "steady companion for many years."

If Maude's father had vision problems, and then Maude herself manifested a similar difficulty, it might stand to reason that Maude's sons would carry the same proclivity, but that was not what afflicted them. It was, as we've already noted, Marfan Syndrome which claimed Maude's sons' lives. But somehow, the Woodworth side of the equation is still the one to follow in pursuing this question, for the Woodworth cousins we discussed yesterday also manifested the same obvious outward signs of the malady.

Tomorrow, we'll follow Maude's story back another generation to William C. Woodworth and Effie Aurilla Williams, to see whether we can find any further signs of Marfan Syndrome in the family lines.

Photograph above: Samuel W. Bean and his wife, the former Maude M. Woodworth. Undated portrait encased in glass, most likely from the 1920s, now in the possession of the author.

Meeting the Woodworths

 

Some distant relatives we meet may be those we soon forget. In the case of Marilyn Sowle Bean, last keeper of the family photos recently spotted at a local antique shop, some of her in-laws were absolutely unforgettable. I know; I've had the opportunity to meet them, too.

It was the Woodworth family who visibly demonstrated the impact of Marfan Syndrome upon the extended family. My first chance to meet them was on an outing to the Sacramento area, where Marilyn's mother-in-law's brother's sons were honoring their mother on the occasion of her birthday.

If that description of the family's relationships seems convoluted, there is a reason for the elongated connections: so many of the men in the family—and one woman—had long since died. The extended family, however, still kept in touch, which is probably why I, through my connection with Marilyn's son, ended up on the invitation list.

Long gone was Marilyn's mother-in-law, the former Maude Woodworth, who died in 1933. Gone also was Maude's brother Lucius Woodworth, who followed his older sister less than seven years afterward.

Lucius' wife, the petite and perky Canadian, Margaret Isabelle Frizzell, however, outlasted them all by decades. It may well have been her eightieth birthday upon which the six sons of "Aunt Belle" had gathered to honor their mother. As family gatherings often do, the event was not complete without a photo taken of dear mom and her sons. As I remember it, the picture basically amounted to Aunt Belle standing with three sons on either side, her head reaching about as high as their belt buckles. Not all of them may have been afflicted with Marfan Syndrome, but each one certainly claimed the telltale height.

It didn't really take a genealogist to figure there was something inherited from that Woodworth side of the family which made each of the male descendants stand out in a crowd. However, was it from Maude's paternal line where the Marfan Syndrome came? Or from her mother's Williams line? I hadn't really traced Maude's family history back beyond the next two generations.

Now that I'm revisiting Marilyn's reclaimed photo collection, I may as well take this as a prompt to see what else can be found on her mother-in-law's Woodworth and Williams families.  

About Sister Mary

In his Civil War letters home to Pendleton, South Carolina, Tally Simpson seldom referred to his one sister, called Mary, simply by her name. His letters often mentioned her as "Sister Mary" or, in some later posts, merely "Sister M."

In strategizing with his Aunt Caroline over a likely candidate to court, once he returned home from the war front, he had noted to her in 1863:

I heard through Sister Mary of the reports that were getting out concerning my humble self. They actually had my wedding clothes nearly completed and reported that I was daily expected home on furlough for the express purpose of consummating my happiness by my marriage....

In later letters with family members, particularly when caught up in strategizing over that "Fair Unknown"—the visiting Fannie Smith, refugee in Pendleton from war-torn Charleston—Tally would resort to code talking, referring to specific individuals under discussion only by initials. Even his own sister Mary, he mentioned as "Sister M."

In one of Tally's later letters to Mary, he addressed her complaint that, when she wrote her brother, she was concerned about being in an "uninteresting mood." He responded,

it was one of the most interesting epistles that I have received from you in a long, long time, and if such are the productions of your dull hours, I must ask you to write me a letter only when you feel in an dull and uninteresting mood.

Yet, despite her own "uninteresting" mood, Mary seemed to have keyed into signals from Tally's own letters, writing that she was concerned that he was "very desponding." True, he had written others in the family concerning his assessment, in the summer of 1863, that Charleston would fall "sooner or later" and that "several other of our important cities" would likely fall at that stage in the war, as well. Despite the details of the circumstances, she seemed to zero in on her brother's feelings.

Perhaps there was good reason for Mary's sensitivity about her brother. Mary, herself, had already lost her own sweetheart, Colonel Benjamin Conway Garlington, to the war. The brother of Tally's brother Dick's fiancee, Benjamin Garlington had left for the war, secretly engaged to Tally's sister Mary. Upon hearing the news that Ben Garlington fell at the Battle of Savage's Station in 1862, Tally confessed to his confidante, his Aunt Caroline,

Never in all my life have I had any occurrence to so overwhelm me. I have felt mournfully sad, and tears have often filled my eyes when I think of [Mary's] deep affliction.

And yet, when he had occasion to write his sister after her tragic loss, his letter seemed to address anything but her current circumstances. In a postscript, however, Tally explained himself:

Perhaps this letter may not suit you nor may it be such as you would wish. But I am persuaded that it is best to make no further allusion to your bereaved condition, for it could tend to keep fresh in your mind thoughts and remembrances which open anew the wound in your gentle heart...

Mary did, eventually, step beyond this great loss in her life. By sometime in the early 1870s, she was married to Captain Thomas Lanier Williams of Greeneville, Tennessee. By the time her father's genealogy of the extended family from Pendleton was published in 1913, Mary and Thomas had six children living: Eliza, Richard, William, Thomas, Maria, and Anna.

Mary's husband, several years older than she, died in 1895, and was buried in Greeneville. Mary followed her husband twenty years later.

Though I have yet to trace the descendancy of each of those lines of Thomas and Mary Williams' children, hopefully they have some great-grandchildren left today who are aware of, and have read, Tally Simpson's letters to his sister Mary during those tumultuous times during his service in the Civil War.

Another May Party

While the wedding celebration of Sarah Taliaferro Broyles' sister Caroline may have been hosted at Ashtabula, there was one more happy occasion which involved the Broyles family, at about the time when they moved away from Pendleton in 1851.  The event, as noted in the Ashtabula book, recalls an earlier time in the life of the younger of the Broyles' two daughters.

While the eldest daughter of Ozey and Sarah Broyles—Margaret—had actually married in New York City, home of her husband-to-be, Sarah, the younger of the two daughters, likely saw her wedding ceremony in 1860 in the new home the Broyleses purchased after their move from Pendleton. After that point, she and her husband, merchant William Dickson Williams, moved away to Greeneville, an eastern Tennessee town then approaching a scant thousand residents.

After Sarah Broyles Williams' death in 1928, someone had written a letter reminiscing about various members of the Broyles family, which was shared in the Ashtabula book. The letter told about an event held, possibly in Anderson after the Broyles family had moved from Ashtabula:

In the early fifties there was a May party in the old Johnson seminary, that stood on the lot of the pastorium on the first Baptist Church.... It was a community affair and was largely attended; it was really a party for they had things to eat.... Dr. Broyles's youngest daughter was the May Queen and well she acted the part.

When the family moved from Ashtabula in 1851, they settled in nearby Anderson, where they purchased "a large, well-built dwelling with handsome entrance" where some members of the Broyles family remained well past Ozey Broyles' passing in 1875 and his wife's death in 1888. At that point, the property likely was inherited by their oldest son, Augustus, the attorney with the impeccable eye for detail in his clients' wills. After Augustus' passing in 1904, the property was sold to someone outside the family, and the original resting place of its owners was transferred from under the trees in the front yard to a proper cemetery in town.

Meanwhile, the Ashtabula place itself—the dear home built by the patriarch of the Gibbes family, and then cherished for fourteen years by the Broyles family—also changed hands. Immediately purchased in 1851 by Yale graduate James Theodore Latta, in 1862, a few years prior to his early passing due to continued poor health, he sold the property to Robert Adger. And thus, the beautiful home and the twelve hundred acres upon which it was situated changed hands once again to the extended Adger and Bowen family—and particularly one daughter, Clarissa, whose diary marks the body of the manuscript from which this brief house history of Ashtabula had been affixed.