Starting Today in Fort Wayne

If you are an obsessed genealogy fanatic, you may think of Fort Wayne as home of the largest public library collection of genealogical material on the North American continent. That, in fact, is true: the genealogy center at the Allen County Public Library takes that accolade, topped only by the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, the largest private holding of such reference material—in the world, in fact.

But for now, the Genealogy Center at the Allen County Public Library is across the street from where I'm headed today: the annual conference of the Federation of Genealogical Societies. I'm here in Fort Wayne to attend the 2018 conference, "On the Three Rivers—Past, Present and Future."

Today, the opening day, is dedicated to those involved in the operation of local genealogical societies. I've wanted to attend an FGS conference ever since volunteering for a board position for our local genealogical society, but given that I'm from California and most FGS conferences are far removed from possible day-trip destinations, I had to await a good opportunity. Now that I've been elected president of our local society, I thought this would be the occasion to merit such a dream trip—and one with a double-header, given the proximity to such a respected research library.

The keynote topic this morning held a particular significance to me, given my penchant for searching out the stories embedded in our families' histories. Scott Fisher, of genealogy radio talk show Extreme Genes podcasts, presents the keynote "The Importance of Story: Tangible Tales of Impact." That won't be the last time that note will be hit in this four day conference.

The day includes sessions by David Rencher and Ed Donakey of FamilySearch, D. Joshua Taylor of PBS' Genealogy Roadshow and currently president of the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society, Rorey Cathcart, Amy Johnson Crow, and Judy Russell. In addition to sessions on society management, group leadership, the FGS vision for the future, and societies' critical role in records preservation, the evening will wrap up with a networking reception.

While I've looked over the list of conference attendees—and, to my dismay, realized I saw no familiar names except those of "famous" genies among the speakers and exhibitors (hi, Peg Ivanyo of SLIG!)—I'm in the right place to not only bump into new friends with the same love of family history, but also to ply fellow attendees with questions about how other local societies accomplish their mission in their communities. That, in itself, will be an excellent learning opportunity. 

How They Connected

Finding that little McLeran detail tucked away in the digitized probate files of Suwannee County helped push me one step closer to uncovering the connection between the McLeran line and my Tison family. True, in a small town, it should come as no surprise that families have intermarried, but I was frustrated to not be able to find the explanation for how the two families did, indeed, relate.

Mary McLeran' note in her husband's file moved me beyond that mystery. Now I knew his name: William T. McLeran. And since he died intestate and the court had named both Mary, his wife, and Jesse, his brother, as administrators of the estate, it was fairly easy, from that point on, to piece together that McLeran family tree.

The litany goes something like this: Jesse and William were sons of Nevin McLeran of North Carolina who died in nearby Columbia County, Florida, in 1852. Nevin McLeran's wife was Rebecca Tison, who died only a few years after he did, in the same Florida County.

Granted, I have yet to find out just who Rebecca's parents were. That, most likely, will take more of that slow and tedious exercise of reading through probate files—if, indeed, there are any digitized copies made available online, as I'm still hampered by geographic location from just stopping in at the local courthouse. But it does illustrate one reality about doing family history research: you do it one step at a time. Each step reveals just enough of a clue to advance your progress one move closer to the next question.

And so we proceed from there. Next quest: to find Rebecca McLeran's connection to the Tison family. My hunch is that it will be somehow connected to my Tison ancestor in the same county, George Edmund McClellan's first wife, Sidnah Tison. It's just a matter of determining how close a connection that will be.

One Last Document . . . For Now

It's been a slow mosey through the probate records of Suwannee County in search of details concerning my Florida roots. Reading every single page of a hundred-page-long probate file, if not expeditious, can at least be informative. Because the place in question—the town of Wellborn—was a small and, apparently, close-knit community, I couldn't help but stumble over names I knew from family history while I was reading the file for someone else.

It always helps to tie up loose ends. While it was gratifying—though disappointing—to learn of the root of the rift between my McClellan ancestors and the family of their step-mother, I had entered into this search with other questions, too.

Remember Mary of the Red Scarf? While I can safely say that my Charles family brick wall has tumbled down and admitted me to the secrets of another two generations, I still have been left with some questions. Prime among them is just how the Charles family—or was it the McLeran family?—connected with another line of mine from Suwannee County: the Tisons.

If you remember, I had been searching through local cemeteries to discover the identity of one Mary who kept showing up in records having to do with my Charles family descendants. I was able to confirm that she was Mrs. Mary McLeran, but what was her maiden name? True, I eventually discovered she was the missing Mary Charles—of the family of the stagecoach legend—but then, that created a new question: who was Mary's husband? And, being a McLeran, could his identity help me determine how the McLeran line connected with the Tison line?

Page by page, scrolling through the digitized Suwannee County probate records, my eyes happened to take in the details from a rather perfunctory letter. At the bottom of the one-page note was affixed the now-familiar signature of Mary A. McLeran.

It was the text of the letter that allowed me to proceed with finding my answer.

To the Hon. Joshua Caraway, Judge of Probates for the County of Suwannee and State of Florida.
Sir
You will please take notice that as widow of William T. McLaren deceased, I have elected to take a child's part of the estate of my deceased husband, the said William T. McLaren, deceased, in lieu of dower, as authorized by the provisions of the Act of February 8th, 1838, and desire that this my election be filed and entered of record in your court.
May 10th 1861
        Mary A. McLeran

Image of Mary A. McLeran's letter to the probate judge of Suwannee County, Florida, courtesy Ancestry.com. 

Those Gems We've Tucked Away

It was while on a mission to find something else that my husband uncovered a photo he had long been missing. He remembered it clearly enough, but the part that wasn't so clear was its exact location. Thankfully, not only was the item found, but now scanned, labeled, stored and shared. Since it's a weekend—and my time, traditionally, to wander from my weekday topics—I thought I'd share this unusual piece of family history with you.

Those who have been following A Family Tapestry for a few years may remember the story I told of my father-in-law, Frank Stevens. From the point at which the Pearl Harbor bombing galvanized so many young men and women to action and service in our country's military, I took Frank's story from his early years in Chicago when, at age seventeen, he enlisted in the Navy, all the way through his military career to the point at which, by then retired from the Air Force in the mid-1960s, he tragically lost his life in a vehicle collision.

During part of his years of service—by this time, in the Air Force—he and his family lived on Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico. The family estimates the time of the photo (below) was some time between 1957 and 1963. It's a photo of Frank preparing to ride what the family called "the G sled"—a device utilized at the Holloman High Speed Test Track.

The only trouble with that estimate—well, if you can trust the Wikipedia write-up on the topic—is that the last of the volunteer human test subjects to ride the sled was in December, 1954. That, likely, was on December 10, when the director, Col. John P. Stapp, achieved 632 miles per hour, the highest known acceleration voluntarily encountered by a human test subject.

No matter when, exactly, Frank Stevens rode the G sled at Holloman AFB, we certainly have a photo commemorating the event—our family's small part to help develop the U. S. space program.

Above: Frank Stevens at Holloman Air Force Base's High Speed Test Track, in harness with monitors attached, about to ride the G sled. Photograph in possession of author.



 

Genealogy With a Mouse

I've spent the last week away from home, while my husband attended an annual conference on behalf of our family business. The conference is held at Disneyland, which may help explain why, though the whole family doesn't necessarily attend the conference, we do come along for the ride.

Since I can't escape noticing details about history—the history of anything, as long as I'm involved with it—I couldn't help but reflect upon the few facts I picked up, last week, about the evolution of both Disneyland and its mainstay, Mickey Mouse.

It wasn't lost on me that Mickey Mouse's hit debut appearance happened to be when my mother was barely three years of age, making Mickey a prime possibility in the sphere of entertainment options during her growing-up years. Yet, I never heard mention of her awareness, as a child, of that phenomenon. At this point—Mickey is nearing ninety years of age this coming November 18—the Mouse is ubiquitous, but back in the late 1920s, though he may have enjoyed success through such groundbreaking creations as Steamboat Willie, the diffusion of one of the first of Walt Disney's entertainment innovations spread too slowly to catch up with at least that one little girl growing up in midwestern America on the eve of the Depression years.

Likewise, as I watched the streams of people flooding through the main gates at the Disneyland park, I found it just as curious to realize that the flagship theme park itself originated in just enough time to have been accessible during those same early childhood years in my own life. While I had heard about Disneyland in far-off southern California, at that time, I was growing up in New York—far too great a distance for our financially-challenged family to avail ourselves of such a dream vacation. And so, there was never a nexus between my family and the dream destination for what seemed to be every other kid in America.

Now, of course, Disneyland is a far cry from what it was in those early years of its creation—even, in fact, from its metamorphosis during my college years, when I was finally able to come see the place for myself. Today, we think nothing of plunking down the exorbitant bucket loads of cash it takes to do Disneyland—to say nothing of including the park hopper option to its partner attraction, the Disney California Adventure Park—a luxury impossible to imagine during my mother's childhood, or even mine.

It always fascinates me to juxtapose family history with that of the current events of an ancestor's lifetime. Yes, it puts our forebears' life experiences in perspective, true, but it also gives me an idea of how little those things that loom large in our own culture hardly seemed to make a dent in the daily lives of the ones who peopled our family tree.

Above: Metalwork detail from a garden outside the Grand Californian Hotel at Disneyland; photo courtesy Claire Stevens.

Genealogy: Leading Toward Reconciliation

When I teach genealogy workshops, I often have a class member come in who eventually realizes she is about to face researching a part of her family's story with which she is not comfortable reviewing. When we begin our quest to discover our family history, it seems we have a positive mindset, perhaps with dreams of discovering famous—or at least rich!—ancestors or stories of adventure or travel from far-flung places.

It is only later that that "oh, yeah" sense of dread hits some of us—that remembrance of the episodes in our family history we'd rather had never happened.

For some, those dark episodes are distant memories—say, of our grandparents' struggles—but for others the pain is buried just below the surface. I'm not sure why people don't think of those scenarios when they leap to learn about their family's history, but eventually, they do recall, and struggle with the realization of what they know lies ahead for them.

It's then that they face a decision: they either have to abandon their goal of researching their family history—at least for that line—or choose to reconcile themselves with some unfortunate details. There are some cases in which that latter course of action might even need a coach or professional help to walk through that haunting memory lane—I'm thinking of cases of abuse or abandonment, for instance—but in less extreme situations, there are still difficulties ahead before grappling with a course of action leading toward reconciliation.

I've always seen genealogy as a trigger for this path toward reconciliation. I saw that firsthand, as I worked on my first husband's family tree and heard his stories of how his maternal grandmother cut off his mom and her children, right after the death of his dad. It was painful, and from that moment on through the ensuing decades, not a word was exchanged between households despite the fact that he and his sister grew up only a block away from his grandmother's home. It was only when he was well into adulthood—and well after I had started researching his family story—that he made up his mind to try and open up lines of communication with her again.

This is not an easy step to take when the separation is that extreme. Yet it can be a healing one—even if the other party refuses to budge from their position of isolation. There is a balm in forgiveness, in letting go, in moving beyond a frozen point in life, even if it must be a one-sided journey.

Having begun researching my mother's southern roots, I'm realizing there is much to reconcile myself over, as well. Of course, it is nothing as immediate as having one's own grandparent refuse further contact, but it is a source of discomfort, just as well. As much as I am amazed at how long the grudges over Celestia Holman McClellan Grant Rice were clung to, I realize that genealogy is, once again, beckoning my family toward reconciliation.

Though it isn't the pain of not being able to speak to the relative I can see from my home's front window, hurts from the long past still echo through the ages. I noted with sadness the struggles Celestia's family must have gone through, in the following two generations—or in that next generation that might have been, had any of the grandchildren had children of their own to pass along her family line.

In this case, as far as I can tell, there is no one now alive with whom to reconcile past hurts, whereas, in my former husband's case, there was. While he first took care to ask his own mother's permission before initiating contact—he didn't want to hurt her, or have his attempts misinterpreted—he did go ahead and have that difficult phone conversation. That awkward moment led to a visit with his grandmother, after twenty years, and then a reuniting of the families. I still have the gifts his grandmother gave me during that first visit, tokens to help me remember the value of reconciliation. Considering that grandmother only lived another ten years or so, it was an important time to make a difficult move.

Many of us will, in our research, run across details that will alert us to difficulties that occurred in our family's history. We all have family members who once suffered difficult circumstances, or perhaps even caused them for others in the family. For some of those events, the time is long past any chance of reconciliation for the parties involved. Even so, for those of us who are mindful in our research when we uncover such details, there is a spirit of reconciliation that we can bring along with us in our journey to understand what our family members went through. While I don't know whether it is possible to forgive on someone else's behalf, we can, at least, learn enough from their mistakes to inform, for ourselves, a better choice toward a more healthful path.

One of the ways we can respect our forebears is to appreciate what they are teaching us. It's not an easy path to take, for those of us who stumble upon our ancestors' foibles, but sometimes, it's the best way. 

Whatever Became of the Children

The words in George McClellan's will sounded so removed from the situation when he labeled the children he had in common with his second wife as "her children." It was as if he wanted to give the impression that Celestia's children were those she brought into the 1861 marriage with the Florida man. And yet, he was sure to make provision for them in his will, as well as for the widow of his five and a half years' second marriage.

Granted, the youngest of those children was born barely six weeks before her father's death on October 19, 1866. This daughter, named Celestia after her mother, joined her older brother, George Edmund McClellan, named after his father. A third child, Celestia's oldest, had died in 1863 in infancy. Despite any impression left by George's choosing of that particular phrase in his will, "her children," we can look back on the records of the time and see clearly that those were McClellan children, too.

When the widowed Celestia finally made her break from the inhospitable Wellborn, Florida, where George's children from his first marriage had undoubtedly made life in that small town unbearable for her, she brought the two youngest McClellan children with her, along with their half-brother from her subsequent marriage to John Grant. This, coupled with Celestia's somewhat unusual name, made it fairly easy to trace her whereabouts after that unfortunate Florida episode in her life.

So we see that, by the time of the 1880 census, Celestia McClellan Grant was indeed situated in Indiana, along with the by-then sixteen year old son George McClellan and his fourteen year old sister Celestia. Twenty years from that point, however, the two McClellan children had surely left home. What became of them then?

Since they, just as much as the children of George's first wife Sidnah Tison, were McClellan descendants, I wanted to know what became of this missing—and often maligned—part of my family. Besides, we now have the know-how to trace those loose ends, so that's exactly what I did.

George, as it turned out, was the easier of the two McClellan children to trace. Within ten years of that 1880 census, he had found a wife in Macomb County, Michigan—no doubt through connections with his maternal grandmother or an aunt or uncle back in Celestia's hometown. The younger George McClellan's bride was Sarah Millicent Axtell, daughter of Ephraim and Fannie Morris Axtell.

By the time of the 1900 census, George had returned to Warsaw, Indiana, with his wife and children, which, by the time of the 1910 census, included two sons and three daughters.

Though George died in Warsaw, Indiana, on the last day of 1928—with his wife following in 1939—I was able to trace most of his children through to their own passing in the latter part of the twentieth century. Most stayed in Indiana—one even remaining in Warsaw—and one moved back to Michigan. One I couldn't locate in later life.

Celestia's daughter, also named Celestia, somehow found her way back from Indiana to Florida. Though I had difficulty finding her after she left her mother's home, by the time of the 1910 census, she was married to a doctor named Urban Sinclair Bird and was residing in Tampa. She had married him when she was in her forties, and the census indicated that she had no children, so I presume there wasn't any previous marriage, though I can locate no record to confirm or deny that.

Though no relation of mine, the elder Celestia's youngest child—DeSoto Grant—had at least two children and ultimately ended up in California, not far from where I live. He died in 1944.

George and Celestia, the children of George and Celestia, became an omitted part of the McClellan family, their mother Celestia's legacy as that second wife who left town—thankfully—with "her children." I can't help but wonder whether any of Celestia's grandchildren ever knew the story of her few years in Wellborn, her interaction with the Suwannee County probate judges, or the estate that she—and "her children"—once inherited.