Knowing The Rest of the Story

It occurred to me yesterday, after posting the newspaper article about young Flora Shields Montague’s devastating illness, that it might have suggested a tragic ending for the young bride.

Of course, I hadn’t thought of that at first—I know the rest of the story. Sometimes knowing something all too well does, indeed, constitute what some have called, “The Curse of Knowledge.”

If you aren’t familiar with that concept—“The Curse of Knowledge”—let me explain it by using some quotes from the people who coined the phrase, expanded upon its application, and use the concept in their professional efforts. Though these people work in fields not remotely associated with genealogy, I find the concept helpful in examining the difficulties we might encounter as we enthusiastically attempt to engage our friends and family with what we see as the fascinating topic of our family history. Perhaps it is partially because we are all too familiar with the stories we convey that we fail to engage our casual audiences.

“We are in deep denial about the difficulty of getting a thought out of our own heads and into the heads of others,” explain Chip and Dan Heath, authors of the book Made To Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. “The better we get at generating great ideas—new insights and novel solutions—in our field of expertise, the more unnatural it becomes for us to communicate those ideas clearly.”

That’s why they call knowledge a “curse.”

Looking back to my post yesterday, in leaving poor Flora hanging between life and her anticipated demise, I can see now why it might have someone concerned. But I didn’t think much about it yesterday.

Why?

Because I knew the rest of the story.

Maybe you’ve experienced something similar, in trying to unpack a story you’ve discovered from your own family history. You know it’s a great story. But try telling your audience—whichever friend or relative you’ve happened to corner in your enthusiastic regaling of the intricate details. The missing link—the part you forgot to mention—might be just the key to help your listener grasp the significance of the event.

I wasn’t too worried about Flora, for instance, because of some very solid evidence I had found years ago. While I haven’t yet rescued it from my storage boxes of decades-old research notes, I do recall details indicating that it was Flora’s own husband, in a civil service capacity acquired much later in his professional standing, naming a new street—extending along the Shields property line, east and west from Blackstone Avenue in Fresno—after his father-in-law, William Shields. Every time I drive south, passing the Shields Avenue exit on California Highway 99, and know the instigator behind that sign’s origin, I am reminded that Flora and her husband did quite well in their long tenure in Fresno society.

I also knew that Flora’s name made it into two documents post-dating that 1897 newspaper report: the 1900 and 1910 census records for Fresno County.

There is no doubt in my mind, though, that something devastating happened to Flora and Frank. For one thing, they remained childless throughout their married life. In the 1900 census, Flora declared herself to have not been the mother of any children—though in 1910, she reversed that report to state that she had been the mother of one, though a child no longer alive. By 1920, Flora was listed having an occupation of Christian Science Practitioner.

Could some of the threatening health issues she surely endured throughout those decades have caused her not only physical trauma, but a crisis of faith as well?

That she survived the malady that prompted such dire newspaper reports as the one I shared with you yesterday is not only confirmed by the subsequent census reports, but also by the death record that demonstrated the age she attained at her passing. For someone assumed to not make it much past her twenties, Flora Shields Montague lived until March 3, 1963—giving her a lifespan of over eighty seven years.

What Comes After “I Do”

With all the marriages in the Shields family I mentioned yesterday, the most logical next juncture—at least from the perspective of a researching genealogist—would be the arrival of the grandchildren. And with six children freshly married off, William and Elizabeth Shields did indeed see quite a few grandchildren in their day.

Times approaching the turn of the last century, however, cannot be viewed with quite the same lens of assumptions as we use in surveying our own times. As mentioned in the comments made yesterday by one reader—“Far Side of Fifty”—the perspective of the times sometimes led people to see things quite differently. I’m sure that would also apply to that traditional expectation of grandchildren.

A little snippet of news I stumbled upon recently in a Fresno newspaper caused me to stop in my tracks and realize how very different life was in the last hundred years.

I found the little article thanks to the search engine at Ancestry.com and their collection of historic newspapers. Sometimes—especially if you are researching family residing in the smaller towns—you can find all sorts of tidbits about daily routines in the life of your ancestors. Mostly, they are cheery recountings of who came to dinner last weekend, or which out of town guests were currently at so-and-so’s summer home.

This article wasn’t that kind of report.

Published in The Fresno Weekly Republican on Friday, January 15, 1897, the article was buried at the bottom of the sixth column on the seventh page, past reports of Superior Court business and results of exams for prospective grade school teachers.

Its sad note recalled the recent wedding—November 25, 1896, seven weeks prior—of William and Elizabeth Shields’ youngest daughter, Flora.

Montague’s Sad Mission.

His Return to Attend the Bedside of His Bride.

            Frank L. Montague has returned from Salt Lake City to attend the bedside of his bride, formerly Miss Flora Shields, who is seriously ill. They were married a few weeks ago, and Mr. Montague went ahead to Salt Lake City, where they intended to live, to prepare their home. During his absence his wife was taken seriously ill. He also became sick in the Utah capital, and was in a serious condition in a hospital there. He improved somewhat, and as soon as possible, though hardly well enough to make the trip, returned to his wife.

            It is doubtful if Mrs. Montague will recover. The many friends of the young couple, so recently happy, deeply sympathize with them in their affliction.

Imagine the Happiness

Weddings are always happy occasions—unless, of course, you are the one who is paying for them.

Imagine the situation of one William James Shields, farmer, of various counties in northern California in the late 1800s. As was common for those times, William was the proud father of many children—among them, five daughters.

Moving his family west from Illinois in 1873, he settled them first in Marin County—the region, today, contiguous to the northern end of the Golden Gate Bridge. Not satisfied with his property just six miles south of what is now the city of Petaluma, he purchased acreage farther south, in San Benito County, and moved his family there in 1875.

By that time, Daughter Number One was nearing seventeen years of age.

If San Benito was the wide-open country of rolling hills and grazing land that it appears to be now, farming might have been just fine, but prospects for suitors most likely appeared dismal.

Perhaps that was not at the forefront of Mr. Shields’ mind when he opted to cash in on his property in San Benito a little over a year later, but the family’s move to San Mateo County improved Daughter Number One’s prospects considerably.

Announcements for Wedding Number One were soon made, and Alice V. Shields assumed her new name upon being happily married to Thomas Freeman Newell in 1877.

A lull in family happiness ensued—no doubt having nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that Child Number Two was a son and not a daughter. Neither would it have hinged upon the fact that father William Shields had decided, once again, to purchase property elsewhere.

This time, the move was to far away Fresno County. The date for the move was the year 1884.

It didn’t take long for Child Number Two to announce his intentions, and a marriage—to young Elsie, she of the maiden name I’ve yet to discover—followed in 1887.

Ripe for happiness, the now-settled farmer must have gone nearly delirious with joy, as Daughter Number Three followed suit close upon the heels of her brother, and—not to be undone—her just-older sister, Daughter Number Two (you thought I had miscounted, didn’t you?) snagged her man not seven months afterwards.

To recap: daughter Lillian Elizabeth Shields became the new Mrs. George W. Taylor in November, 1988, soon taking up residence far to the north in Mendocino County; and daughter Ella May Shields became the bride of Leon Samuel Bean in Fresno on June first of 1889, returning to the San Mateo County environs where her family had once resided.

Tally: four marriages, three to pay for.

Thankfully, all was followed by a peaceful seven years’ hiatus in which Papa Shields could regain whatever financial solvency he once commanded.

Not to be outdone, for the family’s grand finale, youngest daughter Flora bested her just-older sister Josephine by a scant thirty days, marrying Frank Luman Montague in Fresno on November 25, 1896, making this the family’s fifth wedding. Christmas Eve became the day of Josephine’s nuptials to another Fresno man, Wright Henry Spencer.

I can only imagine what a Christmas that must have been for their father.

Above: Among the many unlabeled photographs in Bill Bean's collection, this unidentified young couple, dressed for a festive occasion, accompanies an elderly woman who looks very much like she might be Ella Shields Bean.

Missing Siblings and Those Aha! Moments

As much as I scoured all the online databases to discover those missing siblings of Ella Shields Bean—especially considering the mystery “David” and “Bill” I’m still puzzling over—I have, so far, had no luck.

I still think online genealogy databases are indispensable. Of course, more than that, I highly regard obtaining documents from their original source—provided one is so disposed as to travel to those locations. And I’m ever grateful for each digitized newspaper added to the growing presence of online resources.

But there is still more. Like relying on a shot in the dark, I sometimes go back to square one: that white page with the simple dialog box staring out at me from the middle of an empty page under the multi-colored “Google” banner. I enter my phrase—usually a full name, enclosed in quote marks—hit “Google Search” and hope for the best.

I never click “I’m Feeling Lucky,” for I seldom am.

Unless, of course, Google™ returns me the kind of hits I’m in the mood to see.

With the advent of Google Books, I’ve warmed considerably to the concept of Me, the Lucky Researcher. And those shots in the dark seem to find their target more frequently.

Consider the quandary I mentioned yesterday: the fact that the 1910 census showed Ella Shields Bean’s mom as the mother of eight children. Concerned that, try as I might, I could only find six, I did far more than what I’d consider my due diligence in tracking down the names of the missing two children.

Of course, in my efforts, I looked primarily in California—the state in which the family settled after removing from Illinois in the 1870s. It didn’t occur to me that the missing two children had died before the family’s arrival then. Even so, finding records of deaths prior to the 1870s in Illinois might have also been a challenge, had I pursued that possibility.

However, with my “shot in the dark,” last-ditch effort of entering the name of their father—William James Shields—in the Google™ search engine, I was reminded of one other resource: Google Books.

Originally popping up in the search results as a format at ebooksread.com, a biographical sketch for William Shields provided the answers I needed. In searching for a more readable—and clickable—format, I then discovered the same book, James Miller Guinn’s History of the State of California and Biographical Record of the San Joaquin Valley, California at another website. And there, on pages 1436 and 1437 (talk about long-winded!) of Guinn's book, was a thorough recounting of the family history of both William Shields and his wife, the former Elizabeth Margaret Marsh.

In the midst of that volume—originally published in 1902, the year of William Shields’ death—I found the details that answered my question about the missing two Shields children: 

Mr. and Mrs. Shields became the parents of eight children: Alice V ., deceased, married Thomas Newell, of Selma; Adolphus, a farmer on Whites Bridge road, is a Knight Templar Mason; Charles E. died in infancy; Ella M. became the wife of Leon Bean, of Palo Alto; Lillian E. married George Taylor, of Ft. Bragg, Cal.; Josephine P. became the wife of Wright Spencer, of Fresno; Flora D. is Mrs. Frank Montague, also of Fresno; William Alexander died in infancy.

So it was to be Charles E. and William Alexander who were the missing two Shields children. With kudos to Google™ for both its search and book digitization programs, I now have a tentative—albeit undocumented—answer to my question about those 1910 census numbers.

In finding the answer to one question, it perpetuates another: who are Bill and David? I’m still no closer to finding the identities of these two mystery Shields connections than I was prior to this search. Such is the never-ending chain of genealogy research.

How To Expand That Big Picture

Old family letters often open up further research possibilities by introducing us to names and relationships not previously anticipated. Ella Shields Bean’s letter home to her father in Fresno, California, certainly helped introduce a few others in her family.

I already had the names and pertinent information on several of Ella’s siblings, but a look at two resources told me I was still missing something.

First, in the census after Ella’s father’s passing, I found Ella’s mother listed as a widow next door to the home of some of her grandchildren—and their father, Ella’s brother-in-law, along with a wife by a different name than that of Ella’s sister who had married him. That, alone, tells me there were some significant changes since the prior census was taken.

The key item in that census—a next-to-impossible page to read in the 1910 census, by the way—was that, even though Ella’s mom was now a widow, the total number of her children, including those still surviving, was still enumerated on the record. That number, incidentally, exceeded the count I had on record by two.

Who were those two?

A lot can happen in a ten year span, and the distance between 1900 and 1910 held a lot of changes for Ella’s family. I had that funny feeling that I was missing something when I stumbled upon another helpful resource—which also demonstrated the importance of not overlooking local resources.

While the Internet may be the darling of many genealogy researchers, it just doesn’t serve up every document detail that would help us flesh out the picture of our families’ lives. On the other hand, local agencies and organizations dedicated to archiving city or county histories are sometimes a loosely-organized patchwork of exactly the documents that could help uncover the answers to our family mysteries.

Connecting the needy researcher and the resource-rich but digitally isolated local organization can be a challenge. Sometimes, though, when those organizations create their own website—be it ever so humble—we researchers may then begin to access those far-flung local collections via our computers.

Sometimes, all it takes is a little time and patience with a Google™ search.

Since I’ve been working on this series regarding the Bean and Shields families, let’s take this instance of Ella’s siblings. Thanks to one local collection, I’ve been confronted with names and details that I hadn’t known about the family previously—stuff that tells me I need to dig deeper.

That collection was referred to online, thanks to the website of the San Mateo County Genealogical Society. Unfortunately, that website does not assign separate addresses for each page in their site, so I can’t provide a specific URL for the page where I found Ella’s family information. But I can tell you how to navigate the site to find it.

The collection that opened my eyes to the Shields family information I had missed is called The Schellens Collection. This is a 191 volume manuscript, compiled by one local history enthusiast named Richard Schellens. This was his lifetime labor of love, a collection of abstractions, newspaper clippings, photocopies, hand-drawn maps, and many other secondary resources. The original collection was organized into binders by the Redwood City Archives Committee.

The only drawback was that the original collection lacked one thing: an index.

This is where the local organization entered the project. The San Mateo County Genealogical Society spearheaded the volunteer effort to create the index for the immense collection. That index is now provided on their website. You can find it by going to the main website page, looking down the left margin to the heading, “Library,” then clicking on the entry labeled, “Databases.” That brings up a new screen on the right. Scroll down that right screen about mid-page, where it reveals the clickable choice, “Schellens Collection Index.” That provides an approximate alphabetical range to help you get started. (I say approximate because I had to reverse gears and go to the slot labeled “Bar” to obtain my “Bean” entries!)

It was there, in a 1902 entry for Mrs. Leon Bean (that would be Ella), that I saw the note, “death of David Shields.”

David Shields?

Could that be one of the missing Shields children referred to in mother Elizabeth Shields’ 1910 census entry?

To find out, I have a few options. First, I can take that year and name and try some searches of my own in collections of archived historic newspapers online. Ancestry.com provides me that option—though the collection for Fresno newspapers doesn’t always include the dates I’m seeking, and the search for which Bay Area newspaper also ran the article might get overwhelming.

There are other historic newspaper collections, too—such as a thorough, clickable resource Heather Kuhn Roelker mentioned in her blog, Leaves for Trees, or the list Kenneth Marks rounded up in his recent Google+ Hangout and recapped in his blog, The Ancestor Hunt.

In case I don’t want to be so thorough about my online efforts, I can contact the San Mateo County Genealogical Society. Just like many other genealogy societies, the San Mateo organization offers to conduct research for a reasonable fee, and locating items cited in the Schellens Collection is their forte.

Then, another option—especially for me, considering the short distance involved—I can make arrangements with one of the two libraries in which The Schellens Collection is housed, and go there to do the research, myself.

With the many entries in the collection’s index for the Bean, Shields, and related families in the Redwood City area, that last option suits me best.

Just like the San Mateo County group did, hundreds of other genealogical societies across the country have contributed countless volunteer hours to collect, organize and house significant items of interest to local area historians and genealogy researchers. While you may not be pursuing family history in the northern California county of San Mateo, you likely could have your own research augmented by material on hand at county organizations such as this one. Thankfully, many of these societies have an online presence, whether directly accessed through a website, or indirectly reached through a page on Facebook or even a blog. Thanks to the capabilities of search engines, it makes it easier for us to connect with the local societies concerned with the areas our ancestors once called home, and we can repaint that picture and soak up that ambience through the help of those who call that same place home, now.

No Use Trying to Write

Sometimes, old family letters introduce more questions than they answer. And if one is really lucky, an unsolvable mystery may be thrown in as an added bonus.

Such is the case with this last segment of Ella Shields Bean’s letter home to her father, William James Shields in Fresno, California. It’s not just because the letter leaves me wondering what was written on the missing second page. The details that were included are so unexpected that I have no clue how to connect these dots to the larger family picture.

It leaves me asking questions like:

• Bill? Who’s Bill?
• What “coppiests”?
• There was a trial?

Ella’s next youngest sister was Lillian—nicknamed Lillie. Lillian married George Taylor a half year prior to Ella’s own wedding to Leon Bean.

Since Lillian was not quite on my genealogical radar at this point, I took a moment to check out what could be found online for her. As far as I can see at this point, the couple had four children, with the oldest—Hazel Alice—having a date of birth with as many variations provided as documents I’ve been able to find.

Despite the temptation to be lured down that bunny trail, I’ve withstood that bright, shiny decoy because of another discovery: according to the United States census closest to the date of this letter, Lillie and George had moved their young family far from Fresno to northern California.

The location of their new home may shed some light on a summertime photo I had posted a while back of young Leona and the twins at the Noyo River in Mendocino County. For that is exactly the place where Ella’s sister and her husband were residing at the time of the 1900 census.

One mystery cleared up—just in time for another mystery. I have no idea who the “Bill” is that was involved in a court case Ella mentions as she wraps up this letter to her father.

If that weren’t enough, the letter just dribbles off the end of the page. There is no second page. But, as Ella mentioned, Leona has just awakened from her nap, and there is just “no use trying to write while she is around.”

End of letter. Even if there was a second page.

 

            How is Lillie and babies, and what are they going to do? It will soon be Thanksgiving again where are you going to eat turkey this year. We are going to be alone and have duck. You had better come and take dinner with us. We had a fine rain last night and this forenoon and I guess it is not over yet. I am ever so much obliged to you for sending that plush. By the way I got a package of Fresno papers out of the office last week that was sent me in 1891, the time Bill was having his trial about cheating the coppiest’s out of their saleries. Well Leona is waking up so I must stop as there is no use trying to write while she is around.

            Well this is Sunday 26^th guess I’ll try and …

Family and Fences

Though it is frustrating to know that the letter young mother Ella Shields Bean wrote to her father was undated, I’ve been formulating a way to pinpoint the year based on the reports Ella gave of her young daughter.

In the first part of Ella’s letter, posted yesterday, since she was discussing the seriousness of her daughter’s illness, I had presumed Leona was still an infant. Born July 28, 1891, Leona would have been barely four months old when the letter was written on November 24—if it had been written that same year.

Later mention of Leona’s talkative ways, though, probably indicated a letter dated at least 1892, or more likely 1893.

In the next section of the letter, which I’ve included below, Leona had been up to further antics, making me wonder if she weren’t even older. She certainly was stronger. The only thing I know for sure is that the letter couldn’t have been written after 1895, for the twins arrived in March of 1896. If Ella had thought she had her hands full before that date, I would have loved to take a peek at any of her letters written after that date—if she had the time to even write a letter!

Before continuing with Ella’s letter to her dad, I need to add a few details about the family constellation. By the 1890s, “Mrs. Beane,” Ella’s mother-in-law, would have been a widow. That referred to the former Celia W. Hankerson of Maine, who had traveled all the way to California and married Samuel Bean in Redwood City in 1861. By the time of this letter in the 1890s, Samuel Bean had been gone for almost twenty years.

“Blanch and Harry” refer to Ella’s husband’s sister, Blanche Celia Bean, and her husband, Harry Griswold Watrous.  They were married a year and a half prior to Leon and Ella’s wedding on June first, 1889. Though Harry and Blanche spent much of their time in Redwood City, they evidently also lived for a while in San Francisco.

With Leon a building contractor, it makes me wonder, every time Ella mentions any buildings, if Leon had had a hand in doing the work himself. I wonder if the sweet picture of the children on the porch displays the very remodeling project that Ella referred to in this letter.

 

We have the house moved over like I was telling you, and the porch built on the front and east side, and a four foot walk from the front gate to the back door. I like it much better over here, we also have a five foot board fence between us and Mrs. Beane so Leona can not pull any more pickets off. Blanch and Harry have moved in the City again. The Mid-winter Fair buildings are just advancing very fast. I suppose you will be up again when it commences. We are going sure if nothing happens to us before then.