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.

If She Run Away

While Leon S. Bean was busy working on his several contracts in the Redwood City area, his young wife, Ella, had her hands full at home. She had Leona to keep her occupied.

A letter written on her husband’s business stationery by Ella to her father—dated all but the actual year—captures a moment in this young mother’s life. While she certainly sounds like she had her hands full, I’m not sure who is the more interesting character—the child with antics not unusual for someone of this age, or the mother with her own ways of handling parenting.

                                             Redwood City, Cal., Nov. 24^th, 189-

Dear Father:—

            Your letter was received some time ago, and the package received last week, intended to have written before now, but Leona had the Grippe about five weeks ago and it left her with a real bad cough, couldn’t seem to get any thing to stop it, untill I gave her goose oil that was fine. It soon stopped it. One day and night last week I was afraid it was going to turn in something else, as she was so tight, when she would cough, but she is alright now and is such a mischief she talks everything now. This morning she was standing watching it rain, all at once she ached for papa said he would get wet and she was sorry. She don’t climb on the fence any more, and does not run away so much for she saw a woman whipping her little boy. I told her it was because he run away and if she run away the woman would whip her, so she is afraid to get very far from the gate.

Leon Bean, Community Builder—Literally

When people think of “building community” in our times, thoughts usually head toward endeavors somewhat like those indicated by phrases such as “community activist.”

That, however, was not the kind of community builder Leon Samuel Bean was.

By virtue of having a father who served as carpenter for nearly fifteen before his own birth in the community Leon called home, the younger Mr. Bean had a head start on building a reputation as a dependable contractor.

And that is what Leon did: he built buildings that benefited the community.

Years ago, in researching Leon’s roots, I spent a day in Redwood City. Uncovering some mentions of local residences built by Leon’s business, I often wondered if there would be some way to research all the buildings for which he had served as contractor, to see if any of them were still standing.

Unfortunately, I never did figure out how to accomplish that task.

However, now with Internet capabilities, some of those buildings are finding their way to me.

A while back, I was pleased to discover—thanks to a link sent to me by reader and fellow blogger, Intense Guy, a.k.a. “Iggy”—a photograph of the Carnegie Library being built in nearby Palo Alto in 1904 by none other than Leon S. Bean. Located at the intersection of Hamilton and Bryant, it provided me enough information to check out Google™ Maps Street View, to see if the building were still existent. It didn’t appear so, though, so I missed one opportunity to catch a current view of a building Leon once had a hand in creating.

That idea—of finding an L. S. Bean building still standing—will have to wait for a future trip to Redwood City and surroundings, but I may someday find a way to make that a possibility.

In the meantime, checking all I can find online, I discovered yet another reason to revisit the Redwood City area: the San Mateo County Genealogical Society maintains a collection at the local library. From their online database, I discovered that in their collection are several indexed mentions of Leon and his family—everything from records of his father Samuel’s carpentry services to a picture of his daughter Leona’s kindergarten class.

In a community as small as Redwood City must have been in the 1860s, it seems as if Leon, his father Samuel, and even his sister Blanche and, later, his own wife were well known by all. After spending time researching other branches of our family who hailed from big cities like Chicago and New York, it seems such a change to spend time getting to know ancestors and their place—a place where everyone knew everyone else…sometimes almost too well.

Settling Down to Married Life

One can hardly say that Ella Shields Bean had developed a “sense of place” in her early adult years. Having arrived from her native Illinois along with her family by 1875—when she was about ten years of age, herself—she spent some of her teen years living in San Francisco, and some of those years living in Redwood City. By the time she was twenty, her family had moved yet again to a farming community far removed from the northern California ambience of the Bay Area.

At least the family was still in California. However, that’s one huge state in which to say one is “still” together.

I have so much more to learn about this family—both the Shields branch and the Bean branch. Researching the Bean family pre-personal-computer-age, thankfully, was made somewhat easier by virtue of the Bean family’s arrival at about the same time as the Gold Rush. While I didn’t have the benefit of the multiple online resources we’re blessed with today, it serendipitously turns out that a forty-five minute drive brings me to the California State Library—a place which, over the years, has accumulated an archive of every single newspaper ever published in the state.

Well…at least, that’s what the librarian told me at the time.

Among the collection of California newspapers duly indexed by meticulous librarians, the Bean family—as well as the Shields family in their later years—figured amply within the entries in the newspaper index. For which I’ve been ever grateful!

If I can locate where my own less-than-meticulous filing system doomed the photocopies of relevant articles to be filed, I’ll be able to share those tidbits with you in the next few days. I haven’t missed the fact that these particular issues are still not within the collections of those several online archival companies, so finding my copies will be our only opportunity to get that exact zing of the wording.

Meanwhile, let’s meet Ella’s groom: the California-born Leon Samuel Bean.

Leon was born in May of 1863, so he was only a couple years older than Ella. It makes me wonder if the two of them might have attended school together. Since neither family seemed particularly religious—unlike the other family lines I’ve researched, where I owe my success to the zealous record-keeping of the religious institutions to which those families were affiliated—I have no idea where else Ella might have met Leon. Perhaps Leon’s younger sister Blanche, who was the same age as Ella, might have been the link that connected the two, but how am I to find this out, now?

Leon and Blanche were born to two Maine residents who had, independent of one another, decided to make the long, harrowing journey around the horn from the northeastern coast of the country in Maine, all the way to San Francisco. If I remember correctly, father Samuel arrived first in San Francisco, followed later by his wife-to-be, Celia Hankerson.

I know little else about Leon in his younger years. Unfortunately, Bill Bean’s jumble of family photographs does not include any portraits of Leon before the one I found, labeled, “L. S. Bean, 48 yrs.”

At that point—which would have been about the year 1911—he looks formal, dignified, professional.

And quite bald.

Such a professional portrait would not be surprising, considering Leon Bean was known not only in Redwood City and San Mateo County, but also in neighboring Santa Clara County, as a reputable general contractor.

However, the date of this photograph—the only one of Leon S. Bean left in his son’s collection—indicates that it was taken on the eve of an event sure to make a substantial difference in the life of each of his family members.

And those newspapers would be sure to tell of it.

Tracking the Shields Family

Now that you’ve been properly introduced to the young Ella May Shields, let me take you on a journey to retrace the steps of the Shields family of Illinois.

Ella’s parents—Irish immigrant William James Shields and the former Margaret Elizabeth Marsh—were married in Illinois. Best I can tell so far—albeit without the requisite documentation—the place was Genoa in DeKalb County, and the date was New Year’s Day of 1858. Of course, that information is subject to change with the slightest paper trace that it might have turned out differently.

An 1860 census—which I am not yet sure I can trust—shows William’s young family residing not in Illinois, but in Bourbon County of Kansas Territory. William shows up in that document, roughly at the appropriate age and from the right birthplace. His wife—if this is indeed the right person—was listed by her middle name, Elizabeth, rather than her first name, but otherwise everything else seems to be in order, from place of birth in New York, to current age. And baby Alice, their firstborn, shows a place of birth, just the year prior, in Illinois. So we see evidence that the family is already on the move.

Maybe.

Later census records show subsequent children—well, almost all of them—born in Illinois, however. And the 1870 record does confirm that the Shields family made their way back to a place then known as Drummer Grove Township in Ford County, Illinois.

But not for long.

Somehow, William, his wife and children Alice, Adolphus, Ella May, Lillian and Josephine, made it all the way from Illinois to somewhere in northern California before the baby of the family—Flora—made her appearance in 1876.

What I would love to learn is how they made the trip. Though my romantic mind yearns for stories of covered wagons making the trek over the rugged terrain, 1875 does seem a little beyond that scenario. But not by much.

If they had the money, the Shields family may more likely have traveled by the overland route of the first transcontinental railroad.

That, however, would only have brought them to the east bay. And I have records that they were farmers farther south in Fresno County by 1900.

Voting records provide hints that William Shields may have lived in San Francisco for a while—but then, how likely is it that the William Shields listed in some of those Great Register records would be my William Shields? There is no disputing that that is a fairly common name to be had.

The 1880 census, thankfully, pinpoints one place of residence in California: San Mateo County. Most likely, the Shields family lived for a while in or near Redwood City.

That provided the key—though momentary—link for Ella to meet her future husband. I say momentary, however, because by 1886, a William Shields shows up in the Great Record of California as a registered voter in Fresno County.

Just under three years later, Ella May exchanges vows with one Leon Samuel Bean of Redwood City, and the celebration is hardly over in Fresno before her beloved whisks her away from parents and siblings and back to her former hometown in Redwood City.

From that point on—though not necessarily staying for all that time in just one place—Ella Shields Bean is a Bay Area woman.

Union Central Pacific Railroad Great Over-Land Route Timetable cover, 1881 engraved illustration, courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.