Cleaning the Genealogy Junk Drawer

We all have it: the handy drawer we pull out to capture those odds and ends of life we encounter. We're not ready to toss them, but we're not ready to do anything else with them at the time, either. What starts out as a drawer with just one tiny item eventually gets filled to the brim. And then it's time for some serious cleaning.

Being part of a genealogy society founded in 1952, I've discovered organizations can encounter a lot of odds and ends within their tenure, as well. Some parts are important to preserve—not only the books and research resources we store on the shelves of our library collection, but the history of the organization, itself, as it grows and evolves. What starts out small eventually flourishes—and witnesses changes along the way.

Recently, our board experienced the sad change of losing one of our members who had, in the past, been tasked with overseeing our reference collection and coordinating the volunteers we provide as a public service at our downtown library's genealogy section. Since we had been amassing resources since the year one, you can imagine how many odds and ends might have found their way into a box set up for just that purpose. Call it our genealogy junk drawer.

The box included blank forms to give to patrons wishing to start their family history journey—only over the years, while the methodology might have remained basically the same, the look of subsequent versions of the forms definitely obtained more up-to-date appearances. The older ones—the ones not yet used, but saved with good intentions of thriftiness, or conservation, or wise stewardship—got set aside in the box. One here, one there, over the years adding up to a file folder full of stuff.

There were printed resources, as well. One-page listings of website addresses now gone defunct, mixed in with more up-to-date—or at least more long-lasting—references. Clippings of articles once thought pertinent. Brochures that might help someone—if that someone seeking this obscure resource ever showed up to ask just the right question.

It's a melancholy task to go through this genealogy junk drawer. For one thing, these items simply cannot be viewed without remembering the person—and the one serving in this capacity even before she did—whose hands had placed them there, and whose mind had decided to save, rather than toss, in hopes of further usefulness.

Why is it that paper is not always just paper? That would make a job like this so much easier to complete. Perhaps, now that I'm experiencing this process, I'm only sensing the same feelings experienced by the one who last was tasked with that duty—charged with handling the paper, but seeing beyond the paper to the intentions of a fellow board member who once cared very much, while she was still here with us, for the assignment she was given to fulfill.

Perhaps the worst person to assign to the charge of cleaning out the genealogy junk drawer is a genealogist. We are built to remember. And it is paper we use to carry those memories into the future.

Above: "Paysage de labour" ("Landscape of the plow"), 1929 oil on canvas by Swiss artist François Barraud; courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.

Into the Air

It was an American Eagle that one of Burley Chaney's friends had recently purchased, and the two men had decided, one Sunday afternoon, to take it up for a spin. The "field" they had used for takeoff was literally that: a field on a farm just outside the city of Zanesville, Ohio, where Chaney had recently secured work following his return from a disastrous stint in California.

The plane was said by witnesses to have "made a good takeoff," following which spectators had watched as it "soared gracefully into the air." The pilot—whether Chaney or his friend is not clear—circled his craft to the north and the east for quite some distance, eventually returning to approach the field for a landing.

Before that could happen, though, the plane was observed to have dipped at an unusual angle, but it quickly righted itself. Following that, the sound of the motor was heard to have "turned on full speed," but the plane dipped again. Going into a nosedive, the craft crashed into a ravine at the edge of the field.

Chaney and his companion—Chaney was seated in the forward seat—were both badly injured, and rushed by car to a local hospital. The Zanesville newspaper, The Times Recorder, reporting the next day, provided details of the injuries sustained by each of the two men and noted that Chaney died while in transit to the hospital. His companion, having never regained consciousness, survived only a few hours more.

Chaney was said to have taken the plane up several times before this episode, and had never before experienced trouble with the machine. This time, however—at least, according to the newspaper—"hundreds of persons" were drawn to the scene of the crash. What was billed as a "spectacular nose dive" was said to have been the area's first air tragedy.

According to the March 17, 1930, report, Chaney was described as "a good flyer." Though a follow up report was filed in the next day's edition—including paragraphs bringing up Chaney's unfortunate past in California—no mention was ever made as to the suspected cause of the crash.

Just as had happened barely three years prior for his fellow aviator friend from Ohio, at age thirty three, the last chapter had abruptly closed on a man for whom other burdens had eclipsed his underlying love for flying.

The Lure of Those Flying Machines

It may have seemed the logical move for the Chaney family to return home to Ohio after all they had been through in California. Not only was the shooting at the Gardena airfield a shock, but the resultant arrest, trial and conviction for violation of immigration laws must have made it hard on the family to find work—perhaps even maintain social ties.

After the family's return to the Chaneys' Coshocton, Ohio, hometown, it wasn't long until further devastating events caught up with them. There's a reason why, by the time of the 1930 census, we can only find Burley Chaney's wife and four children enumerated in Coshocton. Though all six of the family had arrived in Ohio recently, by the time of the census that year, Burley was no longer with them.

In fact, it was shortly after he had finally secured work for himself that the change had occurred. Burley had extended his job-hunting efforts, since Coshocton was such a rural area, to the nearby city of Zanesville—the very town where he and the two Perry County boys, the Daugherty brothers, had, five years earlier, met to head west to California.

It was a snap, considering his recent history, that he would no longer be able to seek work with his former employer, the Coshocton police department, where he had once been the town's first traffic officer. Perhaps it was that same personal history that had made it necessary for the family to leave California in the first place. Falling back on his previous occupation, Burley once again found work as an auto mechanic at a garage in Zanesville, only a month or so before the 1930 census.

The lure of those flying machines still had a grip on Chaney, though, and he found ways to connect with others who were as fascinated with them as he was. Whether Burley Chaney was as knowledgeable about the craft as he gave the impression of being, I'm not sure. Still, whether a lack of experience or the bad luck of a mechanical malfunction, it was a surprise to see the headlines in the Zanesville Times Recorder on March 17, 1930, and realize one of the names below was that of Burley Chaney.

 

Progress Where Progress Wasn't Expected

Every two weeks, I check my progress on the four main family trees I've been working on over the past several years. Basically, for each of our daughter's grandparents, I've created a separate tree. (It made sense to use that approach when I began, back before genealogy fell in love with the Internet.) And every two weeks, like a litany, I report the progress on my mother's line and my mother-in-law's line...and leave out the painful fact that I hadn't made any headway for either of the two fathers' lines.

Somehow, in the last sequence, I thought I'd poke around and see if anyone in those fathers' trees needed some spring cleaning. You know, brushing up on some details in the hopes of hints popping up or new documentation finally having been digitized. That's a treasure hunt I don't indulge in often, but for some reason, in the past two weeks, I was hoping it was high time for a break-through.

As it turned out, it was—at least on my father-in-law's line. The outcome was that I added seventy people to that tree—mostly of relatives in auxiliary lines, but I'm a firm believer in the "every little bit helps" maxim. Our Stevens tree now totals 1,187 individuals. Not to mention, in the process, I was able to add additional verification to names I've already entered.

Those digital collections that places like Ancestry and FamilySearch keep adding every week? I'm the one who benefits from those additions—as long as I keep checking in to see whether anything new applies to my ancestors. If you don't look, you won't find.

Next task, of course, will be to head back to my own father's line and see if, just like the Chicago Irish in my father-in-law's line, the Polish in New York will become the recipients of additional verification. That tree has stalled at four hundred three persons since the end of April. It's time to refresh some of those entries and seek some additional ones.

As for the two mothers' lines, progress has been made, as usual. My mother-in-law's pioneer Catholic line in Ohio has spread descendants in every direction, and it wasn't hard to harvest an additional 246 entries in the past two weeks, resulting in a total in her tree of 11,472. On my mother's line, I've been working on the descendants of the couple who can claim Mayflower ancestry, and have upped the count there by 166 to total 10,201.

Not that that progress has insured I'd be able to figure out those myriad DNA matches my husband and I have. I'm still stumped on the vast majority of those matches, despite searching for potential cousin connections. At Family Tree DNA, my husband's matches jumped thirty nine to total 1,374; mine advanced forty five to close out at 2,093. Still, even though there's a Flowers match on my husband's side (his mother's line), I can't figure out the nexus, no matter how many more Flowers descendants I've added to that tree.

Hopefully, the uptick in number of matches this time over last heralds the beginning of the surge of results following the last DNA sales—at least for our kits at Family Tree DNA. For the Ancestry kits and those at 23andMe, there hasn't been much of an increase in results. In fact, our results at 23andMe have continued their steady decline as customers opt out of the genealogical side of the business equation there. Perhaps 23andMe customers are still fixated on solely learning their ancestral heritage—and, for those with the spare bucks, their health reports—for my matches have shrinked by fifteen in the past two weeks, and my husband's matches there have been reduced by twenty seven.

While whispers in the online genealogical world may soon hint at possible DNA sales for Father's Day—or at least sales at the various state and national genealogical conferences—I'll be keeping at the slow and steady process of verifying current members in our four family trees. Oh, and checking for some newly digitized documents to help me add a few family names to each of those four trees—particularly the two fathers' lines which have been so sadly neglected.

An appropriate goal to match up with the hope for some Father's Day DNA sales in the upcoming weeks.

Now Indexing: Cook County, Illinois, Death Records

It's time to do my monthly indexing project. It's a small contribution each month, but I do it in the firm belief that a little bit done on a regular basis will someday add up to something of significance. You know, one bite of the elephant. Inch by inch. Many hands—albeit in a serial sort of way.

Not that I meant to be morbid or anything, but this time, I settled on Cook County, Illinois, Death Records. It was the Cook County part of the equation that drew me in, a research location for our family which potentially could include family records.

When I opened the batch—oh, my! I hadn't counted on seeing recent records! These were from the late 1980s. Not only that, but they were specifically from the Medical Examiner's office. This being Chicago, I got a brief tour of the remains of the year's news cycle—suicides, suspicious deaths, nearly unidentifiable people.

I indexed a lot of "N/A" entries in this batch—unknown dates of birth, marital statuses, parents' names—and couldn't help but wonder what happened to those people. My brain's tendency to search for connections and stories left me somewhat deflated by the end of that run, I must confess. So much sadness out there...

On the positive side—from a simply operational point of view, of course—the batch couldn't have been easier to transcribe. Almost everything on the forms was typewritten. Even the few entries handwritten in, then struck out and amended, were clear enough to understand.

A tempting thought: go back and index another batch in this collection while ones from that same series are still available to work on. It's nice to slam dunk a job and think of making rapid progress. As long as I can remember to maintain balance and not overdo it with volunteer enthusiasm, a little bit more won't deplete those long-term good intentions.

Above: "Deer in a Summer Meadow," undated oil on canvas, mounted on cardboard by German landscape artist Carl Zimmermann (1863 - 1930); courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.

A Fresh Start

What can one do for a livelihood, after having been released from Federal Prison? Burley R. Chaney, now having the onus of adding a year's sentence for violation of federal immigration laws to his record, still had a wife and four children under the age of ten to support. Perhaps things did not go so well for the Chaney family after Burley's release from McNeil Penitentiary on June 10, 1928.

There is no way to determine just how he tried, between that out date in 1928 and the next U.S. Census in 1930, to make a go of remaining at his southern California home. What we do know, though, is that he and his family eventually did return to the same area from which his whole west coast adventure began: Zanesville, Ohio.

Before he had left his hometown in Ohio—a rural area known as Coshocton—he had been listed in the preceding census with his wife and infant daughter, all living with Burley's parents. By the time of the 1930 census, the family was situated with his wife's parents in that same area.

Shortly after the beginning of that year, Burley had been able to obtain work at a garage, serving as a mechanic—the very skill which had led to his meeting Marion Daugherty and, eventually, Marion's older brother Arthur, the now-deceased student pilot who had been training at Chaney's air field in California before his unexpected death.

By 1930, with trial, conviction and sentence behind him, Burley Chaney was back home with his family, and back to work at the relatively tame occupation of auto mechanic.

But what do you tell others about those missing years in a life's story? Apparently, the understanding around town about Chaney's return was that in California, he had been "flying in the government airmail service" and that the reason for his return to Ohio—and a more mundane line of work—was that "a slight accident resulted in injury."

That, at least, was what had been reported on the front page of The Times Recorder in Zanesville, Ohio, on a cloudy Monday, March 17, 1930—barely one month after his return to work in that city. 

Paying One's Debt to Society

Newspapers have a way of playing up the action big, when uncertainty looms and there is still a threat present. When a crisis comes to its concluding act, however, the report may be buried in the fine print, several pages in—if even mentioned at all.

It was only thanks to the records of the United States Penitentiary at McNeil Island, Washington—digitized by the National Archives and Records Administration and included in the collection at Ancestry.com—that I learned what had become of Arthur J. Daugherty's friend and flight instructor following the Ohio man's death near Los Angeles in 1927.

Apparently, Burley Russell Chaney—listed simply by his initials as B.R. Chaney in the federal record—had been sentenced to a year in federal prison. He arrived at the facility—ironically, set on an island accessible only by air or by boat—on August 21, 1927.

Charged with violation of U.S. immigration laws, Chaney had, according to the prison's records, claimed "not guilty" up to the end.

The records included some other interesting minutiae concerning its prisoners. Chaney, we learn from the two pages on which his entry appears, was thirty years of age at the time of his 1927 arrival, and stood five feet eight and a half inches, packing one hundred sixty six pounds. His hair was dark brown, his complexion ruddy.

The ledger reveals that he reported his occupation to be aviator, and his religion to be Baptist. His home address was recorded as "Longdale" in California, but as there is no such designation, the likely mistaken answer was Lawndale, a city close to the Gardena location of the air field where Chaney's student aviator, A. J. Daugherty, lost his life.

Sadly, among the entries spanning the two pages in the ledger regarding Chaney, we learn that he did not provide the required information regarding his parents' names or address, but that he did declare the information required about his wife. Apparently she and their four children remained in "Longdale" in southern California while he spent his time isolated at the island prison up north.

Provided he minded his behavior during his stay, with good time, he could expect to be released on June 10, 1928.

Above: Photograph of the United States Penitentiary on McNeil Island, Washington, about ten years after Burley R. Chaney's incarceration there in 1927; photograph courtesy National Archives and Records Administration via Wikipedia; in the public domain.