Remembering the Last Leaf on a Branch

 

Genealogy, as a pursuit, is designed to memorialize those whose branch in the family tree extends beyond their own generation. But life, as we know it, doesn't always include branches without end.

Something is calling out to remember that last fading leaf on the branch. In researching Marilyn Sowle Bean's family history, thanks to the stash of photos I found at a local antique store, it didn't take me long to find such a tale. Even though the photo is now faded—as you'll see, it had to have been at least one hundred years old—I've got to share it, if only to remember someone who turned out to be the last leaf on his branch of the Moore family tree.

Let's trace our way back from Marilyn, former owner of the photograph, to the man captured in that hundred year old photograph. We've talked about Marilyn's dad, David Moore Sowle, and shared a photograph of David, being held as an infant by his mother, Dora Moore Sowle.

In following the Moore line back through David's mother Dora, I uncovered an obituary for her father which, in one brief article, gave me the background information to guide the search for that family. That, as it turned out, was a fortunate discovery, for he possessed the rather common name of John A. Moore.

At John's passing in 1908, The La Crosse Tribune gave the news in a front page headline mentioning the deceased was a county pioneer. The newspaper noted that John, age seventy at his passing, had come to Onalaska from Maine "in the early fifties, when the country was first being settled."

The April 10, 1908, headline was enough to prompt further research questions. For one, it mentioned John was the father of a "supervisor"—presumably a local political figure. I had to read further to see just how this county pioneer was connected to his community—which led to the family's story.

John Moore was indeed father of a county supervisor, his son Abel Nutting Moore. Abel's parents, John and his first wife Sylvia Nutting, also had a daughter Clara who, at the time of her father's 1908 passing, resided in Los Angeles.

John apparently lost his first wife and married, secondly, a Michigan woman named Arcelia Delamater, with whom he also had two children. The eldest of this second marriage was Dora, the young wife of Joseph Sowle whom we saw yesterday, posed with her newborn son. Nearly ten years after Dora's birth, John and Arcelia announced the arrival of their son Sidney C. Moore.

Not much can be said about young Sidney, other than that I now possess a photograph of the man. Born March 12, 1893, in his parents' adopted hometown—the lumber town of Onalaska, Wisconsin, where his father was known as a "pioneer"—Sidney did not leave much of a paper trail of his personal history. 

At the time of his father's death, the Tribune noted Sidney's age as fifteen. By the time the 1910 census was taken, Sidney and his mother were living in the household of his older sister Dora and her husband, along with baby David. His draft registration in 1917 revealed Sidney had already served in the Wisconsin National Guard, and that he was currently working in La Crosse as a locomotive fireman. His last appearance in any document I could find was in Milwaukee, where according to the 1920 census, he worked in a chemical plant. A headstone marked simply "Sergt. Sidney C." tells us Sidney died sometime that same year.

With no obituary that I could find, nor any other record of what became of the man, I can't help but feel a wistful sense of futility in posting the photo I found with the simple inscription, "Sydney C. Moore, G'ma's younger brother." Sidney's gone. His sister Dora, too, long gone. Even the woman who wrote that note is not only gone, but gone long enough for her photo collection to have ended up for sale at an antique shop. Even if there is no one left to remember Sidney Moore, I still feel the need to share his one picture here.

Photo, undated but taken before 1920, labeled "Sydney C. Moore, G'ma's younger brother," from a collection sold at a local antique store, once belonging to Marilyn Sowle Bean, currently in possession of the author.

Excerpt from front page headlines of The La Crosse Tribune of April 10, 1908, courtesy of Newspapers.com.

Family Photos Span the Generations

 

Even if I have none of my own to enjoy, I still find it fun to watch a family's photos trace the changes reaching backwards in time through the generations. Finding that stash of Marilyn Sowle Bean's family pictures at a local antique store, thanks to notification from a genealogy-loving student, has afforded me such an opportunity.

When I had first interviewed Marilyn, so many years ago, about her family history, I remembered her telling me about her dad, David Moore Sowle, and his sister. She mentioned how the family had moved from La Crosse, Wisconsin, to Los Angeles—a big change in so many ways. Although she did share some information on her mother's Norwegian ancestry, she really didn't say much about her father's parents, except to mention that they, too, had made the move to Los Angeles. And yet, come to find out, she did have at least one photo of her paternal grandmother from those early years.

One photo of Marilyn's dad was neatly labeled, "David M. Sowle, high school grad, 1924, 16 yrs. old." I couldn't help but laugh when I spotted the hairstyle from nearly one hundred years ago—not because it was so different, but because I've seen echoes of that same style in the past few years, as well.

Beyond that point in time, there was nothing until the era of baby pictures. In one, aggravatingly trimmed from a post card and leaving only the tantalizing sign of a letter written to "Dear Joe," was the note identifying a snapshot of baby David at fifteen months. It was dated August 10, 1909. I couldn't help but compare it to a similarly aged shot of his only daughter, Marilyn, and wonder just how much she favored her father. She certainly acted like she was a "Daddy's girl" even from comments she made to me so many years later.

Slipping back even further into the family's history was a photo of an infant David posed with his mother, Dora Moore Sowle. Though the photo—cut, once again, from a picture post card—was undated, I already know that David was born May 5, 1908. Whether Dora was modeling the height of current fashion, I can't tell, but let's just say this wasn't an informal setting she dressed for.

Dora, the "Gram" in the photo with Aunt Jo I shared last week, came from a family with a long history in the logging region around Onalaska, Wisconsin. At least, in several newspaper articles on the family, the phrase "pioneer family" was often mentioned about the Moore family.

Among the few photos on this part of Marilyn's family, there was one picture included of Dora's brother, which of course prompted me to do a bit of research on this family. Though the photo wasn't very clear, tomorrow we'll take a look and learn a bit about Dora's family, mainly in hopes that someone researching that family line might be interested in receiving a copy of that photo. 

A Different way to Celebrate

 

It's been a somewhat sedate Fourth of July weekend, despite the incessant popping and crackling in the air each evening this past month. Not that last year's horror of ravaging wildfires throughout much of our state has dampened my patriotic urge to celebrate, but let's just say I'm looking for a different way to honor our country's start.

Summertime cookouts and red-white-and-blue inspired desserts aside, what about honoring the Patriots in our own family lines? Those who are already members of the Daughters of the American Revolution have already accomplished the task of identifying their specific ancestor, but do your family members know anything about this person?

Those who are not D.A.R. members might not even be aware of the resources the national organization provides online for everyone through their "Ancestor Search." All it takes to use that search engine is a surname, and you can check to see whether anyone in your family might have served as a Patriot in the American Revolutionary War.

I am always amazed at how people whose families turn out to have deep American roots do not realize their own family's history. My mother-in-law was one example, who assured me in an initial research interview that her own grandparents were the likely ones to have "just stepped off the boat" from the old country. How wrong she was. I've found at least two Patriot names for my sisters-in-law to use for their own D.A.R. applications, if they should so choose.

However, for those who do know about their Patriot ancestors, why not share some interesting detail about that ancestor? A while back, I was attending a D.A.R. scholarship function when the principal of a local school asked some members to say something about their own Patriot ancestor. What a fascinating collection of vignettes came out of that impromptu exercise! There's no reason why we can't offer up such cameo comments on our own social media for this Fourth of July weekend. While it won't be quite so noisy as fireworks—or as dangerous, for those of us in drought conditions—perhaps this could be a spark to turn attention back to the roots of this patriotic holiday.

 

Above: 1819 painting by artist John Lewis Krimmel, "Independence Day Celebration in Centre Square Philadelphia." Image courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.

Taking a Genealogy Break

 

Sometimes, the people most devoted to genealogy end up being the ones so busy helping everyone else do their family tree that they don't have time to work on their own. Have you ever found yourself in that situation?

After spending days trying to figure out just how to outmaneuver Google and provide a decent subscription service for A Family Tapestry, I guess I got burned out on not being able to work on my own genealogy. So I took a tech break and caught up on some DNA duties.

I don't know about you, but I've had to catch up on one routine DNA task. Do you remember when Ancestry launched their "Do you recognize them?" tag on their DNA match page?

 

Right when that launched, I jumped on it and completed the information sequence on several of my matches. It's been helpful to see each updated match appropriately labeled with a specific relationship level, not just a vague range of possible relationships.

That was over a month ago, and apparently much has happened since then. When I took a look at the listings last night, there were several more DNA entries which needed updating—so, rather than continue to wrestle with tech issues, that's what I did: work on my own family history tools. It was a nice break.

I can't help but wonder whether that new tool was simply a device for subscribers to use for their own benefit, or whether the information gleaned from subscribers' input will go towards further honing the relationship estimates. While yes, the information we input will help us immediately through tallies, such as mother's side versus father's side, I'm thinking of something a bit more detailed.

Here's what I'm seeing: once you answer the initial question about which side of the family a given match belongs to, a second window pops up with a long list of possible relationships. The list even goes to such distant levels as half third cousin twice removed—I know this, because I have several DNA matches in that category. Once that relationship chart opens up, I noticed one other detail: percentages posted next to each specific relationship choice.

This may come as no surprise to you, but my reputation as an outlier holds strong in those percentages, apparently. Mine are usually on the low end.

What I am wondering: what is Ancestry going to do with all that crowdsourced information they gather from this latest addition to the DNA services? Will they use the data input by subscribers to re-calibrate their estimates? I certainly hope, in the aggregate, such data will help hone their future predictions, at the least. Even better, perhaps the information gleaned might lead to further observations useful for genetic genealogy.

In the meantime, it was nice to take some time to simply work on those routine genealogy tasks that sometimes get pushed to the back burner when pressing matters pop up.

 

 

Tackling Technology by Poking Around

 

I tell ya, being a genealogy guinea pig is hard. I take my work seriously, but sometimes a task's outcome cannot be predicted.

Take this blogging predicament faced by those of us who still use that free service at Google's Blogger. As of July 1, their email subscription service, FeedBurner, was (mostly) discontinued. While portions of that program are experiencing "upcoming changes," the one change bloggers are most concerned about will now effectively wipe out the ability for blog subscribers to receive notification by email that a new post is available to be read.

The first recommendation to bloggers was to download their subscriber list for future use in switching to another service. That task, if not done by July 1, is not a tragic loss; the data will still be there—for a while longer—for blog owners to access.

It's the next step where we can stumble. Hands down, bloggers do better when they play to an audience, and regular followers close that feedback loop. But what is the best option, now that we've lost FeedBurner?

I might say, at this point, that this dilemma is one faced only by those using the Google Blogger service; migrating one's blog to, say, WordPress is a viable option, and indeed, some genealogy bloggers have done just that. Alternately, those of us who appreciate being able to read a wide variety of genealogy blogs need not worry about losing—and thus, scrambling to replace—their subscription to their favorite blogs on that other service.

So, here goes step one for this genealogy blogging guinea pig: adding an alternate handy dandy subscription button to A Family Tapestry. I might add here that I tackle technology by poking around—and, as I discovered yesterday, that's a good thing. Not all written instruction is sufficiently fool-proofed.

My choice for alternate subscription service is to use Feedly, a popular feed reader service. My first step was to set up my own account (free) at Feedly, then subscribe to my own blog through the Feedly site. The way I did that, after duly reading all the instructions and watching the mini-video overview, was to cut and paste my own URL into the subscription box at Feedly. Easy peasy.

Emboldened by my brazen success, I went on to add several other genealogy blogs to my account, divided by the three maximum categories the free account at Feedly will allow. Just in case there was a cap to the number of blogs and other feed types I could follow, I took care to only capture the URLs of my favorite blogs at Blogger, not WordPress, as of course the latter will not be impacted by this change. If there is a ceiling at Feedly, I have apparently not yet reached it.

Once I took care of my future voracious reading habit, I turned my attention to the second portion of this project: ensuring that others will be able to subscribe to my blog as well. This is where I ran into problems. While it appears that Feedly provides an easy-to-follow procedure for this, alas, this guinea pig did not manage to press the lever which led to the download of positive reinforcement cheese puffs.

On step two—was it really only step two which became my downfall?—the instructions stated, "Insert your feed URL." In non-geek terms (at least I thought), that meant cutting and pasting my website address. So I did.

Wrong.

Then, I noticed in the fine print, "Find out how to find your feed URL here."

"Here," incidentally, had that bold blue color, beckoning me to click and be led to geek nirvana...or at least the paradise which would give me all the answers I needed for Feedly.

Wrong. It didn't. In fact, clicking on that link led me to a page that blurted out—yes it did; it blurted—"This UserVoice instance is no longer available." Well, boo, hiss. 

I had to do a little poking around searching to find my own answers, especially since bumbling on ahead anyhow resulted in code which, pasted into my blog's back end, only led to yet another error message. Clearly, I wasn't seeing the light. Just yet.

But then, there is Google. Sometimes, Google can be your friend. At least this time it came to the rescue. I asked Google first for a solution to what I thought was my problem: "How to add your blog feed to Feedly." But remember, this is a two way street, and while that search result provided a generally helpful article, it tackled the vantage point of subscribing to blogs, not allowing others to subscribe to my blog.

Time to revise search terms. This time, I looked for the more specific "how to find a feed's URL" and came up with this nifty hack: specifically for Blogger, the writer's advice was to add the line "feeds/posts/default" to the end of your blog's URL.

Holding my breath, I did just that. And voilà! It actually worked. I then could return to the Feedly "factory" and move on to Step 3, copy that resultant handy dandy code provided by Feedly and insert it in my dashboard at Blogger.

Phew. That's enough for today's workout for this genealogy blogging guinea pig. While you are certainly welcome to click on that bright green button over on the left column here and subscribe to follow this blog via Feedly, I'm ready to get back to being just a plain ol' genealogy guinea pig now.

Did ya Miss me?

 

It's July first. I suppose that might not matter much to you, other than to remark on how quickly the year is flying past us. If you are, for instance, involved in matters at local governmental agencies in the U.S., on the first day of July, you might breathe a sigh of relief that you and your budgetary allotments are now in a new fiscal year. But for those of us who are either bloggers or appreciate receiving other writers' blogs via our email inbox, July 1 signals a big change for those using blogging services at Google. If you are one of the subscribers to this blog receiving posts at A Family Tapestry via email from FeedBurner, it means you didn't get any notification that this post has gone live.

Did ya miss me?

The change to blogging services at Google via FeedBurner is not recent. We talked on this blog about this upcoming change not long after Google made their initial announcement. In fact, it was a specific comment on the change here by one reader—and fellow blogger—that inspired me to serve as genealogy guinea pig once again, only this time as genealogy blogger guinea pig, for my posts today and tomorrow. I've got some tips I still need to check out.

Of course, for those who have been wise enough to jump on this problem and solve it right away, there have been options. One example was John Reid, whose prescient decision to switch blogging sites entirely—and who wisely ran the two sites, old and new, with plenty of warning, concurrently to ensure all bugs were worked out—yielded him an artfully-done, streamlined new home for his long-running blog. He is currently posting on a WordPress site under the slightly modified title, Anglo-Celtic Connections. Yet, even with his advanced planning, he encountered bumps in the road with his subscription service of choice—he had at first used MailChimp—and had to search out a better option for his requirements.

While seasoned blogger John Reid seems to be satisfied now with MailPoet, a note-to-self for all of us bloggers still on a Google platform: MailPoet is specifically designed for WordPress blogs. And some of us don't yet want to make the switch away from our blogging platform.

While I secretly have secured for A Family Tapestry a toe-hold on a website at WordPress, I'm not ready to make the jump, myself. In the meantime, I've noticed—through my (erstwhile) handy email subscription to his site—that Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings has also recently discussed this latest change and how it will impact his blog.

Randy uses Feedly for his own voracious reading habit, and recommends the service to those of us left behind in the wake of the FeedBurner change. Truth is, I thought I had, too, having added it to the clickable buttons on the left column of my own blog—until, that is, I decided yesterday to give it a test drive and clicked on my own blog's Feedly button. All I got was an error message. Guess I must have missed a left turn somewhere around Albuquerque on that one.

And that is where I'll become the genealogy blogger guinea pig tomorrow. I'll try setting up the Feedly system and subscription button on this blog once again. Hopefully, this time it will be a keeper.

 

Aunt Jo

 

I guess the next worst thing to inheriting a collection of family pictures with no labels is to receive labels but no context. Marilyn's Aunt Jo was one of those relatives.

From the collection of family photographs I rescued from a local antique shop—thanks to a tip from a local genealogy-loving student—I had no problem at all spotting the photos of Aunt Jo. When I ran across the label on the first picture, I remembered instantly who Aunt Jo was. I recalled Marilyn sharing family stories which featured Aunt Jo favorably—although I can't exactly remember what the stories were about, or how Aunt Jo figured into Marilyn's family constellation. But she was there, undoubtedly there.

Now that the rescued photographs provided the prompt, I tried to see what I could find on Aunt Jo. I learned, for one, that "Aunt" was not just a title of respect bestowed upon a parent's friend, but a true blood relative of Marilyn's father, David Moore Sowle. Aunt Jo, David's sister, was born Josephine Lucille Sowle in Onalaska, Wisconsin, on June 22, 1913, five years after her brother's arrival in the household.

Aunt Jo likely moved to California with her parents, Joseph Leslie and Dora Moore Sowle, a break from the rest of the extended family, who had been in the La Crosse county area for generations. Living in California in the same household as Joe and Dora at the time of the 1940 census, Josephine was listed under her maiden name, but the record indicated she had been divorced. In California? Or Wisconsin? I couldn't find any record of that.

A year later, a twice-divorced man from Illinois by the name of Elza Glenn Smith enlisted in the army and was stationed at Los Angeles harbor. A year after that, he and Aunt Jo were married in a ceremony at Fort MacArthur.

Beside just one more detail, that is all I could learn about Marilyn's Aunt Jo from some online sleuthing. Other than the fun pictures I spotted in that rescued collection from the antique store, each one carefully labeled in Marilyn's hand with only the words, "Aunt Jo," all that was left were the memories kept by the niece she must have doted on. With no children of her own to keep her memory alive, Josephine Lucille Sowle Smith died in Los Angeles in 1957, still in her early forties.

     

Photographs: The above two pictures were labeled by Marilyn simply as "Aunt Jo" but the last one had the year, 1934, and the explanation, "Aunt Jo, Gram + Gramp," likely Marilyn's grandparents Joe and Dora Sowle.