United, They're Traceable

 

Trying to find ancestors in America prior to the 1850 census can be challenging. Without a listing of all household members by name, individual relatives seem to disappear into the nameless data. When their names reappear in that expanded 1850 record, far from the home where they were born decades prior, we can't always be sure such common names signify the specific ancestor we're seeking.

There is one exception to that predicament, however. While we couldn't necessarily be sure of the right identity, assuming the ancestor had traveled alone, the fact that those who migrated westward in those early years of the 1800s often did so in the company of many others may turn a fruitless search into a more favorable outcome for us researchers. United, those traveling ancestors were often more traceable.

It was a fortunate discovery, while researching the descendants of my mother-in-law's fourth great-grandfather Lyman Jackson, to find his grandson Royal along with two of his siblings in a census record, long after they had all left their home in Erie County, Pennsylvania. Granted, I wouldn't have spotted that coincidence, had I not taken the time to actually look at the document in question. That little now-habitual exercise has paid off well in research dividends.

Researching those ancestors whose American life story unfolded prior to the 1850 census enumeration can be challenging. As children of pioneers took up their parents' pioneering spirit and continued that westward movement, it could sometimes be challenging to trace each family member. And yet, given the time period, people often moved in clusters—for mutual support, sure, but primarily for safety.

Apparently, when Lyman's grandson Royal began his move westward, he, too, heeded that admonition to travel in numbers. Those numbers—judging from his landing place in Wisconsin in time for the 1850 census—gained names and faces, at least if we can rely on the similarity of his neighbors' names to those of the siblings in his family.

One entry below Royal Jackson's household was that of Charles M. King, whom I already had learned was husband of Royal's oldest sister Rosanna. By the time of the 1850 census, the King household included four sons as well as Royal's sister Rosanna, giving me more names to research as I complete the picture of Lyman Jackson's many descendant lines.

In addition to that discovery was the appearance of another brother on that same census page. Apparently, on his way to Wisconsin, Ebenezer Dunham Jackson had stopped in Summit County, Ohio, to obtain a marriage license to wed Angeline Hine in 1845. By the time this Jackson family was recorded in the 1850 census in the town of Adams in Green County, Wisconsin, the household included three young sons.

While not making much progress in tracing each of these Jackson lines individually, taking time to study the entire page of the census enumeration for just one of them yielded the discovery of two additional siblings. Once again supporting the concept of cluster genealogy, we discover that those pre-1850 American families, when traveling united, are more easily traceable. 

Finding the Family Connections

 

DNA testing can point us back to the ancestral place where we had previously failed to locate records and confirm the connections we cannot yet see. Better yet—at least in my experience—DNA testing can lead us to see the family connections we previously had no idea even existed. That certainly was the case with my paternal grandfather's roots.

Last week, I mentioned finding the baptismal record for Marianna Wojtaś, my second great-grandmother. Of course, that was a name I would never have known if it weren't for clustering DNA matches at MyHeritage, where I apparently have a good number of Polish cousins. But it wasn't even the Polish cousins who had shown up in that AutoClusters readout I had tried, now so many years ago; at first it was the cousins from Milwaukee who at first had had me stumped, but then led me to the truth about my grandfather's secret origin.

Now, moving forward, I've placed most all of those DNA cousins in their proper place in my family tree, but reconstructing the roots of these collateral lines still challenges me. For one reason, I can look at records from one online resource, and discover that there is no comparable document listed at another online resource for the same geographic area.

Having found the baptismal record for Marianna Wojtaś, I learned she was likely born sometime in June of 1815. After all, with the prevalence of infant deaths during that era, parents didn't dally in getting their children baptized. Marianna's record showed the sacrament was performed on June 29 in a parish then called Ponschau, but now known as Pączewo in Poland. The church record also noted the Wojtaś family's home to be located in nearby Wolental.

However, when I went to the website of the Pomeranian Genealogical Association (PTG) to cross-check the records of Marianna's possible siblings, while I could find other children of Martin and Anna, there was no listing for Marianna, herself.

Still, I decided to pursue these other siblings, starting with the Wojtaś sibling whose many children ended up emigrating far from their home in Poland: Marianna's sister Anna.

From the transcription at PTG, I learned that Anna was baptized at Pączewo in 1821. FamilySearch.org became my next stop, where I learned Anna was married on January 17, 1848. The marriage was conducted not in Pączewo, but in Schwarzwald (Czarnylas), perhaps because, by that point, Anna's sister Marianna was living there with her own growing family.

I've been able to find several baptismal records for the children of Anna Wojtaś and her husband, Jan Krzewinski. It was several of the children, rather than Anna herself, who moved away from their native Poland to settle in the United States, in the city of Milwaukee in Wisconsin.

Though Anna's sons Piotr and Andrzej became Peter and Andrew in their new American identities, all of Anna's emigrating children—Izydor, Marianna, Piotr, and Andrzej—kept their Polish surnames up until their deaths during the era of the first World War. While some of their children or grandchildren opted for more Americanized surnames in subsequent generations, I've been able to connect their lines of descent with the many DNA cousins I've found through testing at all the major DNA companies working with genealogists.

Finding those DNA connections, first through the AutoClusters program at MyHeritage.com and then exploring the connections through matches at other companies, has been quite an experience. Yet, confirming those discoveries was also aided by the relative ease with which we can retrieve historic records in this country.

What about researching those Polish DNA matches who didn't descend from Wojtaś family members who immigrated to Wisconsin? That's the challenge I'll be working on this week. 

Uncorking the Information Bottleneck

 

Sometimes, all it takes to convert a brick wall into a mere information bottleneck is one clue enabling us to reach beyond the blockade. In the case of Aunt Rose's mother—Anna Krauss in New York, but apparently Anastasia Zegarska in Pomerania—that bottleneck became uncorked in the form of DNA matches.

While Anna had reported, according to the 1910 U.S. Census, that she had given birth to eight children, only two had survived to adulthood: Rose and her brother, my tight-lipped grandfather who refused to divulge his true heritage to anyone. Rose, though married three times, had no children of her own. This left my grandfather as the only one to give his mother grandchildren. Thus it was no surprise, once I submitted DNA test samples of my own, to discover there weren't any close cousin matches in my test results except for the few family members whom I already knew personally.

There were, however, nearly twenty unidentified third cousins with an obvious Polish heritage who did show up in my matches. Almost all of them had roots in Wisconsin. And eventually, I discovered that these unknown cousins also connected to me through one particular surname: Zegarski.

Why one set of Zegarski relatives chose to go this-a-way while my own great-grandmother ended up going that-a-way, I can't explain. I often wonder whether my great-grandmother knew that her siblings had also emigrated from the Pomeranian village of Czarnylas which they once called home. From what little I know about my great-grandmother, there seems to be no sign that she had kept in touch with these other immigrant family members.

Regardless of what the true story might have been—and I may never know the full explanation—there are details which I now can figure out. Because we all can now take a DNA test, I can find relatives who may be able to reveal the part of the family story which was once a mystery to me. And because now a worldwide fascination with genealogy has led to accelerated digitized provision of useful documents, I can discover information I would have been hard-pressed to locate in a previous era.

Simply because we can, I can now tap into a website in Poland in which volunteers have transcribed baptismal, marriage, and death records for the region historically known as Pomerania, home of my paternal grandfather's ancestors. That website, home of the Pomeranian Genealogical Association—Pomorskie Towarzystwo Genealogiczne, or PTG for short—provided me an opportunity to discover all the Zegarska sisters who married in Czarnylas at about the same time as our Anna. All I needed to do was search for the bride's surname of Zegarska and limit the search years from 1850 through 1880.

Once I gathered the names of the other Zegarska women who married in Czarnylas, I then needed to research just who they were. Because I had DNA matches claiming some of these same women, I could sketch out a quick tree for each of these ancestral women, starting from the DNA matches themselves. This gave me the rest of their stories—as well as inferring my Anna's own story, as well.

True, if it weren't for developments like the ability to submit a DNA test and connect with matching cousins, I couldn't have found the rest of that story. My grandfather's carefully guarded secret—for whatever reason he felt compelled to do so—would never have been uncovered, if it hadn't been for tools like DNA testing. But now, thanks to these innovations, I now know that Anna—Anastasia back in Poland—had sisters named Paulina Czechowski and Anna Gracz who either migrated to Milwaukee themselves or saw their children make that move.

Saturday's the Day

 

Why yes, I realize it is still a week away from Christmas, but in my case, I may get to enjoy a little Christmas this coming Saturday as well. My reason to celebrate? Apparently, the antique store in town which holds the remainder of Marilyn Sowle Bean's photo collection has not yet closed.

I made the phone call yesterday to see whether it was already too late. After all, though I saw the news on social media that this particular antique shop was slated to close, there was no mention of a precise date for this unfortunate occurrence. Since travel plans had already whisked me thousands of miles away for the past week, there was nothing I could do about this predicament until I returned home.

When the phone rang this time at Hubba Hubba—yes, that is the name of the store—the owner did something she said she never does: answer the phone, herself. Usually, she lets the staff standing closer to the phone handle the calls. For some reason, this time was different.

She remembered the photos. After all, it was a collection, not just a few scattered items. Because so many were labeled, she could tell these were part of a family collection, and made sure to keep as many of the items together as possible.

There were not just pictures, but newspaper clippings and other items more suited to a scrapbook collection. Thinking over some of the details she had spotted, the owner had questions. Did one of the men own a lot of dogs? Well, yes—sort of. That was Sam, the poodle trainer for the Ice Follies. Was Marilyn's nickname Rinkie? There was a copy of her high school graduation program with her nickname written in it. The shopkeeper had evidently gotten to know her "client" well, for we had quite a conversation about the items included in Marilyn's collection.

Of course, paramount in the exchange was securing a time when I could access the collection to see for myself what is left. How soon would the shop be closing? I didn't want to miss my last chance.

"Give me a few days," the owner replied. She wanted to assemble all the pieces of the collection before I met with her. Thus it was decided: I'll be able to see what else can be rescued from Marilyn's collection this Saturday. What a long journey this personal treasure chest has taken—and if I can find any extended family members who would like to receive a particular photo from the collection, that journey may continue, long after our Saturday meeting.

Without a Will

 

...there may still be a way.

Yesterday, we were puzzling over why Maude Woodworth Bean's paternal grandmother, Eliza Smith, would have shown up in two places in the 1850 census. One instance was in her father Abraham's household, while the other was in the household of her husband Lafayette Woodworth's father, along with their two oldest children. Was one entry for someone else by the same name?

While it is true that Smith is a common surname in this country—and Eliza a popular given name of that time period—it wasn't necessary to mount an exhaustive search to demonstrate that there were no others by that name in Eliza's hometown in Kenosha County, Wisconsin. Noticing that Eliza's father, Abraham Smith, had died just five years after that same 1850 census was taken, I thought it might be possible that he left property behind at his passing. And where there's property to be inherited, there is usually a will.

Unfortunately, in Abraham Smith's case, his November 1855 passing was not preceded by any indications which might have prompted him to record his last wishes, for the man died intestate.

Fortunately for us, far removed from the time of that sad loss to family, it turns out that the county in which Abraham Smith died has been diligent about allowing digitization of their records, including probate records for that time period in the 1850s. From the comfort of my own home, I was able to read through the entire packet of material in Abraham Smith's file, and note key entries which will serve our research purposes.

Prime among those documents were a few pages tying family details together. First was the court record that named Abraham's oldest remaining son Amos as the administrator of his estate. As we'd already seen from the one 1850 census—the one including an entry for a single Eliza Smith, their oldest child—Abraham and his wife Amanda were parents of nine children, of which Amos was the third born. As the oldest son remaining in 1855, it fell Amos' lot to perform the duties of administrator.

The second document in the probate file for Abraham Smith was Amos Smith's acknowledgement of a petition in the probate process, a document in which is listing the names of his father's widow and children as heirs. Topping the list was the oldest child, named specifically as "Eliza F. Woodworth aged 27 years," followed by her brother Amos.

Why Eliza showed up twice in the 1850 census, I still can't say, but finding this document helps establish the fact that that Eliza listed in the household of Abraham Smith did indeed represent the same woman listed again in the census as the wife of Lafayette Woodworth.

Best yet was the third document in the probate file: a receipt signed by Eliza Woodworth acknowledging that she received her equal portion of the proceeds of her deceased father's estate.

With that collection of digitized documents easily found online, I am more confident that I've got Maude's grandmother Eliza attached to the right Smith family—a consideration which easily could have led us in a wrong research direction. But with that discovery comes another question: whatever became of the eldest Smith son, Joel? The absence of any mention of his name in his father's probate record is owing to the fact that Joel predeceased his dad by just a few years. At Joel's premature passing, he was only twenty years of age. Could this be an echo of the Marfan Syndrome which struck a devastating blow to so many of the descendants of Maude's generation in the Woodworth family?

 

Above: digitized copy of Eliza Woodworth's signature from a receipt in the probate file of her father, Abraham Smith; image courtesy Ancestry.com.

An Ordinary Name Like Smith

 

Surnames can have a "Goldilocks" syndrome of their own. When they are too rare, it's hard to find enough records to facilitate a family history search. When they are too common, they bring on enough of an avalanche of resources that the researcher gets flooded with more results than can be handled. It's those surnames in the middle—not too rare, not too common—that become the sweet spot we love to find.

Today, however, is not one of those instances. This is the task I've been procrastinating until the very last moment: looking for someone with the surname Smith.

As we wrap up a month of pondering the family represented by a rescued stash of photographs—the collection once owned by Marilyn Sowle Bean—we now turn to consider a woman by the name of Eliza Smith. Remember that we are seeking any sign of who in the family might have carried the Marfan Syndrome which cost Marilyn her husband, her son, and several in-laws' children. It seemed apparent that the syndrome might have come from Marilyn's mother-in-law's side of the family, one of the lines leading to Maude Woodworth Bean.

So far, we've examined the lines of three of Maude's four grandparents: Woodworth, Williams, and Farrand. Now we need to touch on the fourth grandparent, a woman by the name of Eliza Smith.

Tracing that family line backwards in time, I nearly groaned when I learned that Maude's paternal grandmother had Smith for a maiden name. Fortunately, from that backwards-in-time vantage point, it was not Smith which I had to begin my research with, but Woodworth.

Eliza Smith Woodworth's most recent appearance in a U.S. Census record was at the turn of the century—that other century. There, in her residence in Los Angeles County, California, the mother of eight children now lived with only one other person: her husband of fifty four years, Lafayette. 

At the time of the 1900 census, Eliza stated that she had been born in New York in August of 1828. She indicated that, while her mother had also been born in New York, her father had come from Connecticut.

It is probably a good thing we were able to find Eliza in the 1900 census, for if she had died any earlier, we would have had to settle with finding her back in the 1880 census, at a point which provided us with even less information on this Smith descendant. By the time of Eliza's passing in 1905, thankfully a telegram home to family back in Wisconsin prompted an article in the hometown newspaper of the region where the Woodworths once lived before immigrating to California.

It's a good thing the Kenosha Evening News chose to be so informative about this woman who left town with her family back in 1886. The article gave her name as "Mrs. Eliza Smith Woodworth," and noted that this "pioneer resident" had been a daughter of a local man named Abraham Smith. Furthermore, the obituary listed the names of all eight of Eliza's children, three of whom still remained in the Kenosha County area in Wisconsin.

This detail will be helpful in my goal of examining whether any other branch of Maude's extended family might have exhibited signs of that same Marfan Syndrome which was so devastating to her own immediate family. I'm still working my way through the descendants of each of Eliza's children. However, what I'm curious about is Eliza's collateral lines: who were her siblings?

Thankfully, it was fairly easy to locate an Abraham Smith in Kenosha County, Wisconsin, just as Eliza's obituary had indicated. Though I lamented the newspaper's lack of mention of any siblings which might have survived her—especially those who might still be living in her hometown—I did find Abraham and his apparently large family in the 1850 census. Thankfully, I might add, as Abraham died only five years later.

Abraham Smith's household did indeed include a twenty two year old woman named Eliza Smith. The only problem with that discovery was that I already knew something about Eliza in the 1850 census: that by then, Eliza was married to Lafayette Woodworth, and was already listed elsewhere in the 1850 census as the mother of two children. Why would she be listed in two places?

 

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.

California Calling

 

What brought our ancestors to a new hometown? More to the point, just how did individuals come to the decision to uproot from their home and head elsewhere to seek their fortune? Did they make the move one by one, en masse with family and neighbors, or one after another in a serial migration?

Family stories may illustrate one of the three styles of migration—or, in some cases, more than one variety of migration before the family's story was completely told. In the case of Maude Woodworth Bean's ancestors, what at first glance might have seemed a lump sum proposal—all her grandparents' families moving at once to the same location—turned out to be more of a serial installation. It was interesting to track who in the family arrived in California first, and who trailed long afterwards.

According to his obituary, Maude's father William Woodworth arrived from the midwest when his parents made the move to California in 1886. The Woodworths had originally lived in Kenosha County, Wisconsin, but three years prior to their westward migration had settled in Sioux City, Iowa.

At the time of the move to California, William Woodworth was about nineteen years of age. As he was not the oldest, the question becomes: who else in the family accompanied their parents, Lafayette and Eliza Smith Woodworth, to California.

The only child besides William to make the move directly with his parents was the baby of the family and his father's namesake, then fourteen year old Lafayette Woodworth. In California, the junior Lafayette Woodworth married a fellow immigrant from the midwest, Olive Hostettler, and raised their four children in the vicinity of the southern California property where his parents settled.

As one might guess, oldest daughter Frances was already married to Charles Larabee and mother of three children long before her parents decided to leave for California. The web tightens when you realize that Frances' younger sister Emma was also married to a Larabee—Gilbert, whose father Eleazar was possibly older brother to Frances' husband Charles. With an "interwoven thicket" like that for a family tree, it wasn't likely that either Woodworth daughter would follow her parents to California.

Other than those two exceptions in the family, the rest of the surviving children of Lafayette and Eliza Woodworth did, indeed, follow in their parents' footsteps—but not all at once, and certainly not right away.

Second-born Woodworth daughter Mary married a man by the surname Vincent, taunting me with the possibility that his was the namesake of the street running by the property where the Woodworths settled in what eventually became the town of Covina. That, however, was not the case. In digging into this line further, it became clear that Mary and Lewis Vincent were married back in Wisconsin where their four children were born. It was not until the 1900 census that we find the couple in California, living next to one of their now-married sons.

Even later than his siblings was the arrival in California of Woodworth son Joel. According to his obituary, Joel's move from Sioux City, Iowa, preceded his death by barely six months. And the first sign I can find of remaining son Harvey Woodworth was not until well after the 1920 census, when he and his wife—by then, both well into their sixties—showed up in a Pomona city directory in 1928.

Tracing the Woodworth family from Wisconsin to Iowa and then, eventually for some, to southern California helped me see that some time frames do not quite follow the assumptions we might have about how families remove from one location to another. Digging into the history of the region helped reveal the story behind why so many people from the midwest during the 1880s might have made the decision to choose southern California as their life's destination.

We'll take a look at some of the resources I unearthed in the process of trying to answer the question of what made the Woodworths decide to move. The first stop, however, will be to explore what can be found online for the maps of that time period showing the names of local landowners. Spoiler: not finding the Woodworth name launched me into a search for a timeline regarding how—and when—people settled in the region which eventually became Covina, California.   

Digging Deeper for Details

 

Sometimes, the answer we're seeking to our family history research question is buried in the details. Right now, I'm wondering just where the hereditary disease known as Marfan Syndrome might have first manifested itself in the family of Marilyn Bean, the woman whose photographs surfaced at a local antique shop after her death seventeen years ago. Most of those details point to Marilyn's mother-in-law Maude Woodworth Bean as the carrier. But was that legacy bestowed upon her and her brother from the Woodworth side of the family, or from their mother's Williams family line?

In trying to answer this question, there are complications in the research process. Who's to say what the cause of death was, barring access to the details in an actual death record? 

In searching for any sign that others in Maude Woodworth's extended family showed signs of the deadly Marfan Syndrome—either in Kenosha County, Wisconsin, where many in that family were born, or Sioux City, Iowa, where they stayed before emigrating to Los Angeles County in California—there were very few family members who died of any cause at a young age.

True, for deaths of that time period and location, it would take that old-fashioned research route of sending for a death certificate if the record wasn't digitized at any of our usual go-to genealogy websites, so we'd still have to wait for an answer. In the meantime, though, it seemed quite a few of Maude's relatives made it at least to retirement age, or well beyond it.

For those who did die far too soon, it is hard to determine whether the underlying cause might have been an as-yet not widely understood disease like Marfan Syndrome. Besides, in the time periods we're examining—Maude's father William was born in 1867—there were any number of diseases which could have claimed a child's life, or that of twenty-somethings, for that matter. Not to mention, just as we're experiencing right now, there were epidemics which felled large numbers of people, children and adults.

With that in mind, family history might have as its corollary research requirement the knowledge of the history of contagion. Perhaps not in all cases, but especially in ours, being aware of the ebb and flow of contagious diseases could help clarify signs of the goal we're focusing on. 

For instance, in pursuing this question of the cousins who met an early death, there were a few whom I wondered about. Take, for example, the instance of Helen Vanderburg Standard. Cousin to Maude, Helen was only twenty eight years of age when her husband put out an emergency call after midnight for assistance at their home. She died that March 3, 1942, still at home. What was the cause of death? Was it sudden? Was it lingering? Was it unexplained?

Another sad loss in the extended Woodworth family was that of Charles Sumner Woodworth. He would have been Maude's uncle—if he had lived beyond childhood. A clue to his brief life is carved right into his headstone, listing his name as "Charlie" Woodworth. The now-old memorial is difficult to read, and it is likely that the age marked on the headstone may have been transcribed in error as a younger age than Charles was at his passing. No matter: here was another Woodworth relative who may have been lost simply because of Marfan Syndrome.

Or was he? It is hard to tell without more information. But not even a death record from 1861 could have completely informed us—even if we could locate such a record at all.

One detail I did unearth as I was building out the Woodworth tree: Maude's grandparents had plenty of company when they made the decision to uproot their family in Iowa—including Maude's dad William—and move to California. Before we examine the roots of Maude's mother's family, let's take a look at just how many from the Woodworth side of the family made the move to California—and see what drew them to that vastly different region of the country.

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. 

 

When the Same Surnames Keep Showing up

 

Until the puzzle pieces keep repeating themselves, we sometimes don't even realize we've just received a research clue.

When I found the wedding photo of Lynn Ottum and Robert Wulf among the collection of pictures I retrieved from a local antique store, I presumed the former owner, Marilyn Sowle Bean, had kept the memento because they were her relatives. Last week, I researched both names and, surprised that I couldn't find any connection to my mother-in-law's family, decided to post the photograph here anyhow, in hopes that someone in their own family might find the post and request to receive the picture.

With that, I dismissed from my mind the possibility of discovering a new family line for Marilyn...until I ran across a second photo bearing the same surname. When surnames like that—especially a name I had never heard before—keep popping up, I wonder whether I've missed a connection.

To tell the truth, when I didn't succeed in determining a family connection last week, I actually thought maybe I had been overzealous in my purchases at the antique store. Maybe this was someone else's family photo. However, the photo I found this week—still from Marilyn's collection retrieved from the antique shop—definitely had a connection to Marilyn's family.

There is no doubt that this photo is tied to Marilyn Bean. Even if she hadn't affixed her meticulous labels on the reverse, I could tell the young boy in the photo was her own son. Granted, it was hard to determine his age but remembering how he always looked so much older than he actually was, because of his height, I would have guessed he was about five years of age. I wondered, however, why the little girl sitting with him wasn't instead paired with Marilyn's daughter—until I realized she would have been a toddler at that point, if her brother was just five.

For privacy reasons, I'll just say that the young girl, whose name was listed on the reverse, also had the same surname as that of the bride in last Saturday's photograph. My first guess was that the bride from last week's photo must have had a brother, and that this little girl would have been his daughter. 

However, having now encountered two people with the same surname helps focus the research effort more accurately. That research effect thus revealed the bride's approximate date of birth, leading me to discover her place in the 1940 census—back in La Crosse, Wisconsin.

Apparently, just as had Marilyn's parents, after the 1930 census, bride Lynn Ottum's parents, Marjorie Schulze and Alvin Lawrence Ottum, moved their family from Wisconsin to southern California after the 1940 census. Though there was only one child listed for that census, Alvin's obituary, printed in the newspaper back home following his 1986 death in southern California, indicated that among the surviving family members were two daughters, as well as one son. Although his children were unnamed in the article, this leaves us with the possibility that the younger daughter might actually be the one named in the photograph.

Regardless of the actual identity of the young girl in the photograph, the picture is now one which I want to return to a family member. Not only that: whether Friends, Associates, or Neighbors, this F.A.N. Club clue reminds me that seeing the same surname twice—or more—in the same collection of the family's "stuff" is my prompt to keep searching for the connection.

This is no longer the case of a memorable wedding ceremony—or even of a cute little girl posing in a photo with one's son. Marilyn kept these photos her entire lifetime for a reason. It's now my task to discover what that reason might have been.  

Three Young Siblings

 

Not all the photographs we rescue from antique shops are hundred year old gems. Some abandoned family collections include more recent treasures.

Such was the case when a thoughtful fellow researcher alerted me to the cache of family photos at a local antique shop belonging to my former mother-in-law. When I went to the store to rescue what I could find of Marilyn Sowle Bean's collection, there were many pictures of family members whom I remembered including in the tree I built for her family.

There were, however, many others I didn't recognize. Some of them emerged from the "who is this?" pile and staked their claim in the "known family" pile as I sorted through each picture in tandem with building out the collateral lines in Marilyn's family tree. Considering Marilyn was born in 1928, most all of her relatives are now long gone. Matching names and faces would have been a challenge, had it not been for Marilyn's persistent habit of labeling everything.

Remembering that Marilyn, an only child of a woman who was oldest of nine children of Oliver and Ragna Brague, grew up in southern California without meeting many of her mother's siblings back in Wisconsin—let alone her cousins—I was surprised to see how many photos she had of her mother's nieces and nephews. While the miles may have prevented the families from getting together in person, I suspect a lot of letter writing took place over the years, accompanied with family photographs.

One such photo, likely sent first to Marilyn's mother and eventually passed to Marilyn, was of three young children born to her mother's youngest sibling. That baby brother, Daryll Brague, was born only a few months after Marilyn, herself, putting Marilyn in the unusual position of being older than her own uncle.

Just as Marilyn would have done, her mother was likely the person who affixed the careful label naming the three children, followed by the explanation of whose children they were—Daryll and his wife Harriet—and, most importantly, the date the picture was taken.

I wonder whether Marilyn ever got to meet her young Wisconsin cousins—or even her aunts and uncles who were nearly the same age as she was. The two branches of the family seemed so separated, by the point at which I knew them. I wonder, too, whether any of them still have a copy of this 1962 photograph, and pull it out of its spot in their family albums to compare facial details with the most recent arrivals among their great-grandchildren.

 

Just Because They're so Cute

 

At some time in either late 1913 or early 1914—even mothers sometimes can forget—Mrs. Joseph L. Sowle brought her two cherubs to the Pryor photography studio in La Crosse, Wisconsin, to have their young portraits taken.

She certainly dressed her children for the occasion. David Moore Sowle, by then having passed his fifth birthday, did not seem to chafe at the outfit she had chosen for him—certainly not the togs preferred by boys his age. Little Miss Josephine Lucille Sowle, though yet a mere infant, smilingly cooperated with the procedure.

Baby Josephine eventually became the woman Marilyn Sowle Bean called "Aunt Jo," and David, thirteen years later, married Olive Brague and soon after became Marilyn's father. And old photographs like these, carefully passed down through the decades, ended up abandoned at an antique shop upon the passing of the last generation in that family line.

Above: Photograph of David Moore Sowle and Josephine Lucille Sowle, taken circa 1913 by the Pryor studio in La Crosse, Wisconsin; currently in possession of the author.

 

Three Friends

 

Where are those old high school yearbooks when you really want them?

It's the 1930 yearbook which would have featured Josephine Sowle, perky "Aunt Jo" to Marilyn Sowle Bean whose entire photo collection ended up in a local antique store after her passing. In 1930, Jo would have likely graduated from high school in Onalaska, Wisconsin.

Jo and a friend—the photograph was thankfully labeled with the name Hazel Rahn—were captured in a 1930 snapshot flanking a man whose name was given as Ernest Otto. Jo we've already discussed, and I've been able to find quite a bit about Hazel, but Ernest was not so easy to discover. Not only was his expression, in contrast to the two smiling faces of the young women on either side of him, difficult to read, but the only man by that name in the same town would not have been of an age to be high school companions with Jo and Hazel.

Josephine Sowle could easily be found in the 1930 census in the household of her parents, Joe and Dora Sowle. Ever mindful of each relative's "FAN Club"—her friends, associates, and neighbors—I took a look around the census page where I had found the Sowle family. It wasn't too hard to spot Hazel Rahn, two doors away, living with her parents, Herman and Lula, and her three younger siblings.

Hazel Rahn was easy to find online, not only in trees on Ancestry.com, but in other records. While not in a high school yearbook, her face could be found in its college counterpart a few years later. It was in that year, 1933, when she graduated from the State Teachers College at La Crosse, and began a long career in education and community service.

Two years after her graduation, Hazel married farmer Henry F. Heider, and while she continued teaching, the couple raised three children. Her years in a close-knit farming community inspired her, in 1982, to publish a book, Along the Waterloo Road, on the history of the place which she had come to call home.

All that, of course, was long after she smiled for an unnamed photographer in 1930 while standing arm in arm with her neighbor Jo and Ernest Otto. But who was he? 

The only detail I could find for someone by that name in Onalaska, where the picture was taken, was for a twenty seven year old man living not far from Jo and Hazel in the same town. This Ernest was part of the household of Louis and Frieda Otto in 1930. 

Looking closely at that family, I noticed a younger sister, Elisabeth, who would have been the same age as Hazel. Could the gathering have been on account of a party for their graduation? Hard to tell from the one snapshot. A moment in time, capturing three people who, together in 1930, likely had very different stories from that point onward.

Above: Photograph labeled "Josephine Sowle, Ernest Otto, Hazel Rahn, Onalaska, 1930." From collection of Marilyn Sowle Bean, currently in possession of author.

The Proliferation of Orphan Photos

 

The school tradition, in the past half century or so, of printing sheets of wallet-sized photos of elementary grade students will likely proliferate into an extreme case of unidentified—or orphan—photos in many of our inherited family picture collections.

Just think of it: little Janey comes home with an envelope stuffed with pages of miniatures for proud parents to snip and send far and wide. If grandma, grandpa, and all the doting aunts in the family carefully tuck away those miniature portraits for fifty years, who is next in line to inherit the multiplied echoes in each unidentified collection?

Fortunately, the sole remaining school photo in Marilyn Sowle Bean's forsaken collection did have a label—enough of a clue to help me discover just who claimed that earnest gaze and Mona Lisa half-smile. Above the recognizable handwriting of Marilyn herself was a child's signature, telling me instantly that whoever this was, she struggled with dyslexia.

"Carolyn Cublert" was the child's signature at the top of the photo's reverse, followed immediately by an adultlike correction, "Culbert."

Marilyn's due diligence with such labeling duties provides us the guidance to understand why the girl's photo was in her collection. "Aunt Verna's girl at about ten," Marilyn wrote, followed by the date, 1951. Verna was sister to Marilyn's mother, Olive Brague Sowle. Since Olive was the oldest of Oliver and Ragna Brague's nine children, she was seven years older than the couple's fifth child, Verna.

In what might have been seen, among high school sweethearts, as a couple made for each other led to the marriage of seventeen year old Verna to her beau from La Crosse, Wisconsin, named Vern. Vern and Verna were married in 1933—though not at home in La Crosse. Theirs was a marriage in Houston County, Minnesota—not only over the county line from La Crosse, but also across the state line.

Carolyn was the third child of Vern and Verna—and the last. By the time Carolyn was seven, her mother had married widower Arthur Hjelsand, who eventually, at least by some reports, adopted her three children as his own, adding yet another surname for Carolyn to struggle with.

I can't determine when, but at some point after that, Verna and Arthur moved their combined family to the Philadelphia area, where Carolyn's own 1963 marriage license application was published in the Philadelphia Inquirer under her adopted surname. For years after that, she and her husband resided in a New Jersey town, where they raised their only son, but by 1984, she had succumbed to cancer at the age of forty three.

Now knowing her story, I can see why that earnest gaze from the ten year old's photo strikes me as wistful—not only from her unfortunate end, but from the possibility that there may be no one to find who would treasure having that ten year old's photo once again. But for an unexpected disease, Carolyn would likely still be there in her community in New Jersey, perhaps passing her own photo collection on to her grandchildren, instead of being remembered only through a thumbnail sketch from her cousin's lost treasures rescued from a local antique store.

 

Above: Photo, along with its inscription on the reverse, of ten year old Carolyn Nancy Culbert, also known as Carolyn Hjelsand, as a student in La Crosse, Wisconsin, in 1951.

Remembering the Last Leaf on a Branch

 

Genealogy, as a pursuit, is designed to memorialize those whose branch in the family tree extends beyond their own generation. But life, as we know it, doesn't always include branches without end.

Something is calling out to remember that last fading leaf on the branch. In researching Marilyn Sowle Bean's family history, thanks to the stash of photos I found at a local antique store, it didn't take me long to find such a tale. Even though the photo is now faded—as you'll see, it had to have been at least one hundred years old—I've got to share it, if only to remember someone who turned out to be the last leaf on his branch of the Moore family tree.

Let's trace our way back from Marilyn, former owner of the photograph, to the man captured in that hundred year old photograph. We've talked about Marilyn's dad, David Moore Sowle, and shared a photograph of David, being held as an infant by his mother, Dora Moore Sowle.

In following the Moore line back through David's mother Dora, I uncovered an obituary for her father which, in one brief article, gave me the background information to guide the search for that family. That, as it turned out, was a fortunate discovery, for he possessed the rather common name of John A. Moore.

At John's passing in 1908, The La Crosse Tribune gave the news in a front page headline mentioning the deceased was a county pioneer. The newspaper noted that John, age seventy at his passing, had come to Onalaska from Maine "in the early fifties, when the country was first being settled."

The April 10, 1908, headline was enough to prompt further research questions. For one, it mentioned John was the father of a "supervisor"—presumably a local political figure. I had to read further to see just how this county pioneer was connected to his community—which led to the family's story.

John Moore was indeed father of a county supervisor, his son Abel Nutting Moore. Abel's parents, John and his first wife Sylvia Nutting, also had a daughter Clara who, at the time of her father's 1908 passing, resided in Los Angeles.

John apparently lost his first wife and married, secondly, a Michigan woman named Arcelia Delamater, with whom he also had two children. The eldest of this second marriage was Dora, the young wife of Joseph Sowle whom we saw yesterday, posed with her newborn son. Nearly ten years after Dora's birth, John and Arcelia announced the arrival of their son Sidney C. Moore.

Not much can be said about young Sidney, other than that I now possess a photograph of the man. Born March 12, 1893, in his parents' adopted hometown—the lumber town of Onalaska, Wisconsin, where his father was known as a "pioneer"—Sidney did not leave much of a paper trail of his personal history. 

At the time of his father's death, the Tribune noted Sidney's age as fifteen. By the time the 1910 census was taken, Sidney and his mother were living in the household of his older sister Dora and her husband, along with baby David. His draft registration in 1917 revealed Sidney had already served in the Wisconsin National Guard, and that he was currently working in La Crosse as a locomotive fireman. His last appearance in any document I could find was in Milwaukee, where according to the 1920 census, he worked in a chemical plant. A headstone marked simply "Sergt. Sidney C." tells us Sidney died sometime that same year.

With no obituary that I could find, nor any other record of what became of the man, I can't help but feel a wistful sense of futility in posting the photo I found with the simple inscription, "Sydney C. Moore, G'ma's younger brother." Sidney's gone. His sister Dora, too, long gone. Even the woman who wrote that note is not only gone, but gone long enough for her photo collection to have ended up for sale at an antique shop. Even if there is no one left to remember Sidney Moore, I still feel the need to share his one picture here.

Photo, undated but taken before 1920, labeled "Sydney C. Moore, G'ma's younger brother," from a collection sold at a local antique store, once belonging to Marilyn Sowle Bean, currently in possession of the author.

Excerpt from front page headlines of The La Crosse Tribune of April 10, 1908, courtesy of Newspapers.com.

Family Photos Span the Generations

 

Even if I have none of my own to enjoy, I still find it fun to watch a family's photos trace the changes reaching backwards in time through the generations. Finding that stash of Marilyn Sowle Bean's family pictures at a local antique store, thanks to notification from a genealogy-loving student, has afforded me such an opportunity.

When I had first interviewed Marilyn, so many years ago, about her family history, I remembered her telling me about her dad, David Moore Sowle, and his sister. She mentioned how the family had moved from La Crosse, Wisconsin, to Los Angeles—a big change in so many ways. Although she did share some information on her mother's Norwegian ancestry, she really didn't say much about her father's parents, except to mention that they, too, had made the move to Los Angeles. And yet, come to find out, she did have at least one photo of her paternal grandmother from those early years.

One photo of Marilyn's dad was neatly labeled, "David M. Sowle, high school grad, 1924, 16 yrs. old." I couldn't help but laugh when I spotted the hairstyle from nearly one hundred years ago—not because it was so different, but because I've seen echoes of that same style in the past few years, as well.

Beyond that point in time, there was nothing until the era of baby pictures. In one, aggravatingly trimmed from a post card and leaving only the tantalizing sign of a letter written to "Dear Joe," was the note identifying a snapshot of baby David at fifteen months. It was dated August 10, 1909. I couldn't help but compare it to a similarly aged shot of his only daughter, Marilyn, and wonder just how much she favored her father. She certainly acted like she was a "Daddy's girl" even from comments she made to me so many years later.

Slipping back even further into the family's history was a photo of an infant David posed with his mother, Dora Moore Sowle. Though the photo—cut, once again, from a picture post card—was undated, I already know that David was born May 5, 1908. Whether Dora was modeling the height of current fashion, I can't tell, but let's just say this wasn't an informal setting she dressed for.

Dora, the "Gram" in the photo with Aunt Jo I shared last week, came from a family with a long history in the logging region around Onalaska, Wisconsin. At least, in several newspaper articles on the family, the phrase "pioneer family" was often mentioned about the Moore family.

Among the few photos on this part of Marilyn's family, there was one picture included of Dora's brother, which of course prompted me to do a bit of research on this family. Though the photo wasn't very clear, tomorrow we'll take a look and learn a bit about Dora's family, mainly in hopes that someone researching that family line might be interested in receiving a copy of that photo. 

Aunt Jo

 

I guess the next worst thing to inheriting a collection of family pictures with no labels is to receive labels but no context. Marilyn's Aunt Jo was one of those relatives.

From the collection of family photographs I rescued from a local antique shop—thanks to a tip from a local genealogy-loving student—I had no problem at all spotting the photos of Aunt Jo. When I ran across the label on the first picture, I remembered instantly who Aunt Jo was. I recalled Marilyn sharing family stories which featured Aunt Jo favorably—although I can't exactly remember what the stories were about, or how Aunt Jo figured into Marilyn's family constellation. But she was there, undoubtedly there.

Now that the rescued photographs provided the prompt, I tried to see what I could find on Aunt Jo. I learned, for one, that "Aunt" was not just a title of respect bestowed upon a parent's friend, but a true blood relative of Marilyn's father, David Moore Sowle. Aunt Jo, David's sister, was born Josephine Lucille Sowle in Onalaska, Wisconsin, on June 22, 1913, five years after her brother's arrival in the household.

Aunt Jo likely moved to California with her parents, Joseph Leslie and Dora Moore Sowle, a break from the rest of the extended family, who had been in the La Crosse county area for generations. Living in California in the same household as Joe and Dora at the time of the 1940 census, Josephine was listed under her maiden name, but the record indicated she had been divorced. In California? Or Wisconsin? I couldn't find any record of that.

A year later, a twice-divorced man from Illinois by the name of Elza Glenn Smith enlisted in the army and was stationed at Los Angeles harbor. A year after that, he and Aunt Jo were married in a ceremony at Fort MacArthur.

Beside just one more detail, that is all I could learn about Marilyn's Aunt Jo from some online sleuthing. Other than the fun pictures I spotted in that rescued collection from the antique store, each one carefully labeled in Marilyn's hand with only the words, "Aunt Jo," all that was left were the memories kept by the niece she must have doted on. With no children of her own to keep her memory alive, Josephine Lucille Sowle Smith died in Los Angeles in 1957, still in her early forties.

     

Photographs: The above two pictures were labeled by Marilyn simply as "Aunt Jo" but the last one had the year, 1934, and the explanation, "Aunt Jo, Gram + Gramp," likely Marilyn's grandparents Joe and Dora Sowle.

After David Met Olive

 

David Sowle may have spent most of his adult life in California, but he got his start in the tiny town of Onalaska, Wisconsin. There, his father had married Dora Moore, the daughter of what was deemed a "pioneer" family of that lumber region. Dora's family, in turn, had arrived in Onalaska generations before from the forested areas of Maine.

By the time David made his arrival in 1908, the town of Onalaska had been experiencing a twenty year long population slide to less than eleven hundred people. Meanwhile, the neighboring city of La Crosse was experiencing a steady expansion of their population through that same time period. It was inevitable that a young man during that time would look to the larger city for employment possibilities.

Though I may never learn how my mother-in-law Marilyn's parents actually met, in 1927, the La Crosse Tribune and Leader-Press was trumpeting the headline, "La Crosse Girl and Onalaska Man Married Saturday." David Sowle and Olive Brague exchanged their solemn vows at the parsonage of Saint Paul's Lutheran Church in La Crosse.

After a two week wedding trip to Chicago via Iowa, the couple set up housekeeping in La Crosse. That didn't last for long. After Marilyn's arrival the next year—plus a few more years of hard work in La Crosse—David and Olive moved their small family to southern California.

Apparently, they did not move alone. Though I can't determine who made the first move, it is easy to see that David's parents and sister also arrived at the same location. While the 1940 census showed David and Olive—plus young Marilyn—settled in Anaheim, Joe and Dora Moore Sowle and their daughter Josephine were living in neighboring Los Angeles. As David had, the elder Sowles stated they had been in California by at least 1935. Each family indicated their first stop in the state was in Los Angeles.

By 1940, Joe and Dora were in their mid fifties, so perhaps it is no surprise that they reported no occupation. Their twenty six year old daughter Josephine, by then already divorced and living with her parents, was working as a private secretary at a restaurant.

It's at a point like this when I wish I was researching a family which hadn't settled in such a big city as Los Angeles. A small town newspaper would pick up the kind of stories which could help a researcher piece together the timeline of an ancestor's life. Not so much the Los Angeles Times. And yet, I'm not left without any details on Marilyn's family—certainly not after having discovered that stash of family photographs put up for sale at a local antique shop.

While for "Aunt Jo" I don't have a tale written with many words, I am left with pictures—and isn't it those pictures which each are worth a thousand words? Tomorrow, we'll see what we can read into the several photographs I now have of Josephine Sowle from Marilyn's collection.

Photographs: Above, Marilyn labeled this snapshot "Mom + Dad 1928," making me wonder whether she had a specific event in mind. The photo most likely would have been taken after Marilyn was born that year, judging from her mother's appearance. Below: Marilyn labeled this one simply, "Dad," with his name written below. From the appearance of the landscape, this may have been taken near the hills that ring the Los Angeles basin, though it is hard to determine, due to the enormous population growth and urban expansion in the eighty years since their arrival in California.