“Best Wishes for 1955”

With a nod to those of you who can’t believe you are still here to read this today, I’d like to turn the clock back just a bit and revisit the holiday scene of one household over a half-century ago.

It’s not a household I’m familiar with, of course. It’s just a picture I found in an old box given to me by a relative of a relative of my deceased first husband. Talk about being removed from the pertinent details! Sometimes, I don’t know why people assume I can work magic with these mysteries, but they do. Because I love all things family, people tend to assume I also love nameless family I’ve never met—or, in some cases, even the friends of these people.

Why this little sweet photograph was saved, I’ll never know. It came from the belongings of my first husband’s grand-uncle, William Samuel Bean. Or perhaps from his sister’s belongs—you know, the Aunt Leona who always kept me guessing.

It was a photograph tucked in a box of photographs, kept among the piles of stuff sifted through after an elder’s passing, whoever it was. The imprint on the card was a traditional holiday greeting: “Season’s Greetings and best wishes for 1955.” Beneath, it was signed, “Love, Helen, Sid & Diana.”

I tried my best to find any traces of online records connecting these three names with a date near 1955. No luck. I’m presuming the photograph was taken for Christmas, 1954, and that the young subject might have been around three years of age.

Whether family member or friend of either Bill or his sister Leona, I’ll never know. Whoever that little girl was—and I’ll presume she was Diana—I hope she is now preparing for another happy holiday, in a home blessed with a sweet young daughter (or more likely granddaughter) looking much the same as she did in 1954.

Cards like this remind me of the desire to connect that is behind the drive to research family history. The pictures call to mind the people in our lives—and all the circumstances that surround them at that point in time—and how we seek to preserve those memories and those connections. In our efforts to pass these collected memories to the next generation, we find ourselves gazing at what we once were, then looking back to the present and realizing how much our sons and daughters—and grandsons and granddaughters—look like we did when we were three.

And then we look to the future and think of the generations who will want us to pass it on.

The Poetic Justice of Time

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

Coming back down through the fog of a business trip last week—long stretches of flight time disengaged from any connection to news media—produced the jarring effect of entering the reality of bad news like a rough landing.

I took off early one morning with my family, having freshly been informed of the tragedy that ended some Christmas shoppers’ day in Oregon, landed halfway across the continent, and then entered another travel cone of media silence. By the time I made it to my destination—and squared the tally with some personal sleep deprivation—I again discovered how devastating the passing of one day could be. All of a sudden, I entered a world wracked with the agony of another senseless violent act.

While it is now “old news” to those wrung out with the constant repetition that is the media, I only now am beginning to sort out the pain of these stories.

In the meantime, an unexpected hiatus in this week of travel brought both a time of sad news—and a time of personal good news.

It has been almost a year since the last time I had traveled this way—out to the Midwest, a place of rolling plains, high winds and waving brown grasses as far as the eye can see. The last time our family had gathered there, we had come to spend our last moments with a dear relative caught unawares by a fast-acting cancer. The visit turned out to be our last goodbye.

Our family hadn’t been back there since. But last week, on our way from Point A to Point B, it worked out just right to make a stop at the old house which once was so sorrowful.

It was so comforting to see the rest of the family. Time heals, children grow up, and even though memories still bind us to those we remember with that melancholy fondness, we are all able to face our future with the brave resolve of doing what would have made that now-departed relative proud.

As it happened, the daughter of this deceased relative was expecting another baby. Like…now.

The visit was wonderful, but, mindful of the exhaustion of such a state, ended up being much too short. We resolved, at the end of our trip after we concluded our business, to stop by for an additional brief opportunity to visit.

The night before our return, we got the call: a trip to the birthing center was imminent. Within drive time the next day, we were now visiting the proud parents of a beautiful baby boy.

Our last three visits with this family had been owing to the somber occasions of death: first, this daughter’s father, then her mother, and also for my husband’s own mother’s passing. Now, as this couple observed as we said goodbye, we were finally here for a joyous occasion. How “poetic”—as her husband called it—that this time, we would be presented with a time of joy, a time to laugh, and a time to build up.

A time of birth…

Sometimes, we just need to believe, for every time under heaven, there is a purpose.

Top: the initial eight verses of the third chapter of the biblical book of Ecclesiates, generally attributed to the ancient Israeli king, Solomon; by more recent acclaim in its folk rock remake as "Turn! Turn! Turn!" holding the record as the number one hit with the oldest lyrics.

Above: detail from Johann Baptist Reiter, "Two Children Playing With Silk Ribbons," oil on canvas; courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.

Fact, Fiction and Re-enactment

The year is 1816 and Major John Whistler, inside his residence in Old Fort Wayne, speculates on Indiana’s chances for statehood. He shows visitors a map of 1816 Indiana and explains his reasons for believing Indiana will become a state this year. It turns out that Major Whistler is right….

I want you to get a good look at something I found the other day. You know my old friend, Google™—you know, that trusty search engine that never bats an eye at search requests, no matter how unusual the juxtaposition of the terms you have just entered in its dialog box? Well, the other day in puzzling over the Jackson-Ijams-Whistler story, I thought I’d just sit down and cut to the chase. I pulled up the Google site, and entered the two key words I’ve been wanting to know about: Ijams and Whistler.

I wanted to see if there were any other hidden bits of information to reveal more on that story of why widow Ijams traveled through frontier territory to meet and marry a military man in Missouri.

Of course, the documentation itself has eluded me. That, alone, is frustrating. But if others, online in self-published genealogy sites, are stating that that is what happened, then I’ll cautiously accept the tie between those two surnames.

My goal in entering those two search terms was simply to flush out any other trivia-in-hiding. And trivia I did find—though not quite of the type that I would have expected.

My result leaves me wondering whether to take the report as fact. After all, it is, first of all, a report from a newspaper. You know my take on that.

Then, while it is a news story on an actual fort—Fort Wayne in, well, Fort Wayne—it is, after all, a story about a story.

It is a story of a re-enactment of a historical vignette. The date is set as 1816. The location is, of course, the old fort at what is now the city of Fort Wayne. The key players, at least in this newspaper article, are—now, get this—John Whistler and William Ijams.

No, I am not making this up.

I am fervently hoping that the good people running the historical display at Fort Wayne are also not making it up. 

            The staff of Fort Wayne is dressed in detailed 1816 costumes and speak to all as if it is the year 1816. Because of its authenticity, you begin to feel like a settler contemplating putting down roots in this Northwest territory.

            “The Indian problem has died down a bit—it’s mostly Miami around here,” says William Ijams, a gunsmith. “But the purpose of our fort is to make you settlers feel secure, that’s why we are here.”

If this museum portrayal is based on fact, I need to find out who chose the details for this re-enactment, and learn what basis there was for this little bit of history. I’m especially keen on finding out more about this over twenty-year-old display because it mentions one more twist: the contemporaneous service of Elizabeth Howard Ijams’ soon-to-be-deceased husband William, and her future second husband, John Whistler. All, strangely, in that very year of the re-enactment’s setting: 1816.

This is definitely a twist in the research trail I hadn’t been expecting.

Above right: hand-drawn map of Fort Wayne, circa 1795; courtesy Wikipedia from original held by the Library of Congress; in the public domain. 

The newspaper report on the Fort Wayne historic display, written by travel columnist Fred Nofziger, was originally published in The Blade (Toledo, Ohio), section D, page 7, on Sunday, August 5, 1990.

A Father’s Story Through a Son’s Eyes

I considered it a good move to be able to link the subject of my research—John Jay Jackson of Fairfield and Perry counties, Ohio—to the name of his second wife and then to this biographical sketch on their son Lyman James.

As I’ve already mentioned, Lyman’s entry in the 1883 History of Fairfield and Perry Counties includes mention of his father’s family history. Though a brief mention—considering all the detail to follow on Lyman’s own professional and political careers—it does give us a springboard back to previous generations.

Evidently, Lyman’s father John was born in Otsego County in New York. The date given was February 7, 1792. Those will certainly be details to confirm through other means.

It’s the following that I was more interested to read:

His father…was descended from Abram Jackson, who emigrated from England to Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1624.

Granted, I have no idea who Abram Jackson was, but a location like Plymouth and a date as early as 1624 does arouse attention.

All that will come in due time. For now—at least after some more festive notes appropriate to the holiday season—I’ll have to set this tidbit aside until I can recreate the paper trail back to that supposed 1624 arrival in Plymouth.

But I couldn’t resist just mentioning it now. It is, after all, the first time I’ve ever passed by this way.

“Except During the Rebellion”

You can learn quite a lot about a person—when he is willing to brag about himself.

The biographical sketches of the late 1800s were no exception when it came to boasting. Evidently John Jackson’s son, the quite accomplished attorney and military man, Lyman J. Jackson, had no hesitation in providing ample material to the compiler of the volume History of Fairfield and Perry Counties.

Despite knowing that someone had to provide all that information, I’ll set aside my personal bias on the matter and share some of his accomplishments—that is, if we are to believe everything in print.

For one thing, Lyman Jackson served as an attorney in both Fairfield and Perry counties. At the beginning of his biographical sketch in the History, he was serving with the firm Jackson & Conly in New Lexington, Ohio.

Prior to his training in law, Lyman was a farmer—most likely on his father’s property—until October, 1851. He first attended a Perry County school, Saint Joseph’s College, from that point until 1855. An interim period found him alternately back on the farm and teaching school—all the while, studying law and pursuing further college studies.

In 1857, Lyman graduated from Saint Joseph’s College and began practicing law in New Lexington. Not long afterward, he ran for the post of Prosecuting Attorney of the county, and was elected.

Following his service in the war, he was appointed as Prosecuting Attorney to fill a vacancy in nearby Muskingum county, after which he resumed his practice of law back in Perry County.

In preparation for the third Ohio Constitutional Convention, Lyman was elected a delegate from Perry County in April of 1873. By 1877, he was elected as state senator, and was re-elected to the same position in 1879.

Perhaps it is the custom of the time to choose certain details to include in a professional biography. Of course, there was the obligatory mention of a wife—“Miss Mary E. Taggart, daughter of Arthur Taggart, Esq., late of Morgan county”—in addition to the ample nod to Lyman’s own father’s history. What caught my eye, though, was the wording at the close of the entry: 

In religion, Colonel Jackson is a Roman Catholic, and in politics has always acted with the Democratic party except during the Rebellion.

Driven to Distraction

You’ve heard me say it before: nothing is set in stone—not even engravings on a headstone.

Let’s revisit that question of when, exactly, John Jackson’s second wife, Mary, died. Was it in March? Or in May? Last time I looked, I found an entry in the Perry County records showing the date of Mary’s passing as May 19, 1871. One would think a government-issued document would be the final word.

It may not have been.

If the entry in the Find A Grave page for Mary Grate Jackson at Holy Trinity Cemetery in Somerset, Ohio, was a typo, it was a time-honored typo. Perhaps a hundred-year-old typo.

I learn a lot by visiting the reports contemporary to the lifetime of my family’s auxiliary lines. Remember my comments on Lyman J.Jackson’s entry in the 1883 History of Fairfield and Perry Counties? Where I mentioned that you can’t trust anything? It doesn’t matter whether it’s in writing—or even if it looks official.

After reading the rest of Lyman’s biographical sketch in the Perry County, Ohio, history book, I’m wondering just who I should believe for these basic family history facts. While I’m generally thankful for those details I can glean about other family members from the featured person’s bio, Lyman’s entry here makes me want to do something rash, like pull out my hair.

Look here:

In March, 1839, the Jackson family removed from Rushville, Fairfield county, to a farm near New Reading, Perry county, Ohio. The parents lived here during the rest of their lives, the mother dying in March, 1871, and the father in September, 1876.

Okay, see that: “the mother dying in March, 1871….”

Now, my question is: who am I left to believe? Do I just take a vote here? Or toss all these items in the air and see which one comes down first? Perhaps the obituary would settle it.

On the other hand, I have this quarrel with the newspapers….

Military Genes?

Finding the information—no matter how little, and no matter how doubtful—about John Jackson’s second wife was a necessary detour for me. For one thing, I need to be able to sort through the children and appropriately assign them to the right mother. Considering all the misinformation I’ve already encountered—mostly thanks to replicating the story from one newspaper report—I do want to proceed cautiously here. You’ll see why in a day or so.

For now, though, I want to take the detour to revisit the History of Fairfield and Perry Counties, that 1883 volume from which I had extracted the original biographical sketch on John Jay Jackson. Perhaps you’ll recall the mention there—as well as in other posts—of John’s involvement in the War of 1812. Elsewhere, I had also seen mention that both John’s father and grandfather may have played roles in the American Revolutionary War. John’s uncles may also have been quite militarily inclined.

In that 1883 history book, I happened to run across mention of another Jackson in Perry County, Ohio. It was a Jackson, however, that did not fit into the family data I had already found, so I had set it aside.

Now, however, both the name and the story will make a good fit for today’s post. For the name—Lyman James Jackson—belongs not to John and Sarah Jackson, but to John and Mary Jackson. Lyman, it turns out, is Mary’s son.

Whatever military prowess may have been part of the Jackson’s family, it seems to have been distilled and concentrated in this one young man, and released upon declaration of war during the prime of his life.

The Perry County biographical sketch notes of Lyman: 

He was the first volunteer from the county in the Union army. Immediately after the firing on Fort Sumter, he raised Company E, Seventeenth Regiment, Ohio Volunteer Militia, which he commanded as Captain during its three months service in West Virginia. When it was mustered out, he was appointed in August, 1861, Captain of Company G, Thirty-first Regiment, Ohio Volunteer Infantry, and served as such until January, 1862, when he was promoted and commissioned as Major of the Eleventh Regiment, Ohio Volunteer Infantry. With this regiment, a great part of the time in command of it, he served, in 1862, in Maryland and Virginia through some of the severest battles of the war. Resigning this position, he was in May, 1864, appointed Colonel of the One Hundred and Fifty-ninth Regiment, Ohio Volunteer Infantry, and commanded it during its term of service.

Quite a list of achievements, don’t you think?

Don’t go thinking everything listed here is absolute truth, though. The rest of the bio contains information I’ve already learned is disputable. Remember: everything needs to be checked. Even—for those of you so inclined to pursue this name for your own family’s history—military information.

Whether Colonel Lyman Jackson completed every detail of this biography’s excerpt or not, I’d say it was a pretty impressive list of accomplishments. If nothing else, the man exhibited a great deal of determination and a can-do spirit of allegiance. Much the same—at least that’s what I’m wondering—as his father and grandfather might have done. Through the war of 1776 to the War of 1812 to the war of Rebellion, the battle scenes may have changed, but the human tendencies and talents often remain the same.

Above right: Currier & Ives lithograph of the Battle of Fredericksburg, Virginia, on December 13, 1862; courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.