My Favorite Lesser Known Websites

When I do genealogy, I couldn’t live without ancestry.com.  Who can argue with 12 or 14 billion records?  I also subscribe to newspapers.com and fold3.com…  But there are loads of small, lesser known websites out there.  Here are half a dozen of my favorites—all free.

The U.S. Government’s General Land Office Records (above). I don’t have many ancestors who came to the U.S. early enough to be the first private owners of government land (and it was almost all government land back at the beginning)…  But I’ve done plenty of other people’s trees where I found some real treasures here, including ancestors of Amish friends.  And it’s easy—click on “Land Patents” – then choose the state and county, type in the name, and hit “search.”  Often the original patent image is there (similar to a deed), and the images can be downloaded as pdf files for no cost.

Old Time Medical Ailments.  When looking at old death records, one sees causes of injury or death such as “putrid fever,” “lagrippe,” or “consumption,” it’s nice to have a place to consult in order to find out that today we call these same three ailments “diptheria,” “influenza,” and “tuberculosis.”

The Inflation Calculator (above).  Old census records list the value of land and homes.  This website translates those dollar amounts into 2014 dollars.  No calculator can take every factor into consideration, but it’s much better than my wild guesses when trying to figure out, for example, that $300 of land in 1860 might be worth about $77,915 today.

Behind the Name (above).  This is a site with information about surnames, with a twin site for first names.  You can browse the surnames by letter of alphabet, by nationality, or by typing the name into the search box.  The first names can also be sorted out by gender.  This website has been very useful for me when I see a name on an old record which I cannot read (or which was misspelled by the census taker).  For instance, one client’s grandmother was a German immigrant and her first name was spelled a different way on every single record!  But by searching the German female first names on the website, I determined that it was most likely spelled “Ottilie,” since that was a common German first name for girls and none of the other spellings even appeared on the list.

Old Occupations.  Most of time I recognize the occupations appearing on U.S. census records, but occasionally I am stumped by one like “drayman,” “steeplejack,” or “huckster.”  Old English records are even more likely to have occupations I’m not familiar with.  This site lists hundreds of them, with definitions of each.

I hope this list contains something helpful for those of you bitten by the genealogy bug like I am.  What are your favorite lesser-known websites?

Liz, Arthur, and Amy

My mom once sat down and told me about her mother and father’s siblings, and most of it wasn’t pretty!  I wrote down what she said about each one, and lately, I’ve been trying to sort out fact from fancy. 

My grandfather, Robert Johann Erickson, had five sisters, and one was named Mary Elizabeth (pictured)—but she was always called “Liz.”  Two of Liz’ sisters died of tuberculosis—I’ve written about them previously.  Here is what my mother said about her Aunt Liz:

“Liz had seven children and died in childbirth with the seventh. Their ages ranged from 12, 10, 8, 6, 4, 2, down to the baby. My grandmother (Liz’ mother) raised the baby. The father hired a neighbor girl, 18 years old, to be housekeeper, and a year later she married him. They had four children, making 11 in all. He was kind of lazy...”

I’ll never know about the “lazy” part, but I wanted to find out more about this great-aunt and uncle that I never met.  Besides that, when someone dies young, there’s often a story there.

Mary Elizabeth Erickson was born in 1884, the second of nine surviving children of Charlie and Lena Schmidt Erickson.  Liz, as she was called, married Arthur Stafford in March 1901, when she was just sixteen years old.  They had their first child, Mabel, a few months later—and more children came along in 1903, 1905, 1906, 1908, 1910, and 1913.

The 1910 census shows Arthur and Mary living on a farm in Will County, Illinois, next door to Arthur’s parents.  They had five children by then, and a sixth on the way.  But Liz’ luck ran out with child number seven…  Records on findagrave.com show that baby Earl was born on the 29^th of January,1913 and Liz died a week later, on the 6^th of February.  She was buried at Alexander Cemetery in Romeoville.

But what was Arthur to do?  The census records back up my mother’s assertion that the baby was raised by his grandparents.  The 1920 census shows young Earl Stafford living with Charlie and Lena Erickson.  He was still there for 1930 census, when he was seventeen.

It is very possible that Arthur brought in a young unmarried neighbor girl to help with the children and the housework—that would have been very common.  And when I checked the 1910 census, Arthur and his family live in the same census district in DuPage Township as 12-year-old Amy Shepherd and her parents.  By 1913, Amy would have been old enough to be “hired out”—and we know that she was Arthur’s wife probably by 1916, when their first child was born.

The 1920 census shows Arthur (age 39) living with new wife Amy (age 23).   They already have three young children (the oldest is three), and five of Arthur’s children live with them.  Arthur’s oldest child, Mabel, is only five years younger than her stepmother, and Mabel’s occupation is listed as “servant—at home.”  I can only imagine how dreary poor Mabel’s life was.  (Later census records show that within the year, young Mabel had ‘escaped’ her home via marriage—but by the 1930 census, she had five children of her own!)

The 1930 census shows Arthur (50) and Amy (32) living with two of his children and four of theirs.  So Arthur did indeed have eleven children.

Arthur outlived his young wife by eleven years.  They were buried together at Woodlawn Memorial Park in Joliet.

So, my mom was right about the seven children, the death in childbirth, the baby being raised by grandparents, the young second wife, and the four additional children…  But I’ll never know about the “lazy” part.

Remembering Bruce

Lately I’ve been thinking about my only brother, Bruce.  He would have been 57 this week, had he not died of alcohol-related heart failure thirteen years ago.

Bruce and our sister and I grew up in a typical middle-class home of the 1950s and 1960s.  But Bruce was especially gifted in many ways.  He was big and strong from the time he was very young—75 pounds of brawn by the time he started first grade!  The first college football scout to notice him said to my father, when Bruce was just five, “If your boy plays football, I’d love to see that kid when he’s eighteen.”

And Bruce was athletic.  As he grew older, he excelled in every sport he tried—baseball, basketball, track and field…  But when it came time to choose one sport, it was football.  By his senior year in high school, he was a star.

Bruce was also very smart.  And good-looking.  And he lived in a stable Christian home, where college was a ‘given’ and the money was there to make it happen.  But he fell in with a wild crowd, where drinking and smoking and drugs were the norm, and he was the leader of the pack.  Bruce was also what would have been called “high strung”—and I think he inherited the tendency towards depression that runs in the males of our family.  And like many before him, substance abuse was his form of self-medicating.  At least, that’s what my sister and I theorized in long, late-night conversations, years later, on the topic of “what on earth happened to Bruce?”

So he grew up, married, had two daughters…  He somehow finished college (with honors), but drifted from job to job.  His marriage fell apart.  He tried to raise his two daughters, but their grandparents did most of the heavy lifting, while Bruce drifted along in a fog…  But as the years went by, the fog was much preferable to the loud, obnoxious, domineering, hot-tempered person he was when he was sober.  All of us spent less and less time with him.  Towards the end, I felt his hatred enough that I often felt unsafe, and looked over my shoulder when I walked from my garage to my back door.  (Later, after his death, more than one relative told me that my fears for my life were not unfounded.)

So the week of his funeral, we cried.  Not because we would miss him—but because our hearts broke for his wasted potential…  for the two daughters he had failed in many ways…  for what he could have been.

And the years went by—his grave unmarked and his life mostly unmourned.  Thinking about him, remembering him, was painful... 

But lately, I’ve begun to remember the boy I grew up with.  I recall the little guy who had a bit of a temper even then…  If any of us aggravated him to the point of retaliation, he would use the worst bad word he knew—he would call the offender (get ready for it) a “poo poo pie.”

I remember the little brother who, big and strong as he was, was never a bully—but rather, always stood up for the weak.  One time when he was about twelve, he was sent to the principal’s office for fighting, and our dad was called.  It turned out that one of the other boys in his class had a mother who regularly had “nervous breakdowns” and spent time in the local mental hospital.  The other boys were making fun of the kid on the playground, and Bruce stepped in to make sure that didn’t happen any more.

When he was in eighth grade, I came home after school one day and Bruce was in bed—his face beaten to a pulp, almost unrecognizable.  It turned out some gangbanger-wannabes were hassling a girl at his school.  He faced them down and told them to leave her alone.  A few moments later they jumped him from behind and knocked him down and out…  But I don’t think he ever had regrets for standing up for the helpless, no matter what the cost.

I remember the outstanding scholar he was.  Schoolwork was nearly effortless for him.  (I’m pretty sure he had a photographic memory like our father did, and like one of his daughters.)  His seventh grade math teacher put it well, in a parent-teacher conference:  “It really bugs me that I have to give Bruce A’s, when I know perfectly well that he does his homework leaned up against a locker five minutes before class!”

Everyone remembers the outstanding athlete he was.  The week he died, we got a note from Neal Ormond, who announced the West Aurora football games on the radio during the years Bruce played (three years of varsity).  Twenty-five years later, Mr. Ormond still remembered his pleasure in announcing Bruce’s plays on the field. 

I was away at college all three years that Bruce played varsity football, and I’d never seen him play.  So for his last game, the great crosstown rivalry of East Aurora vs. West Aurora in the fall of 1975, I flew home in a small chartered plane to see him play—and it was worth it.  West Aurora had lost every single game of Bruce’s senior year, in spite of his heroic efforts every Friday night.  But that night, Bruce ran the only touchdown of the game into the end zone—and then scored the extra points.  West Aurora won, 8 to 3. 

Bruce never played college football—he was too troubled by then, and burned out, and he became a father not long after high school.  But oh, the memories!…  Our dad kept a scrapbook of it all.

So now I choose to remember not the rude, abrasive, menacing alcoholic of the later years—but the boy I grew up with.  The person he could have been.  The person God meant for him to be.  I think it’s time I had a grave marker made for my little brother—he deserves that.  Bruce, I hope you found peace.  I think I finally have.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

One year later - a postscript:

I recently purchased this marble grave marker for my brother.  When the weather improves here in Illinois, I'll go out to the cemetery and see about having it mounted on a cement base.  It's a step in the right direction.

Another postscript, this one from spring 2017:

James Edward Larkin, Delayed Casualty of War

Not all casualties of war are immediately apparent.  My father, for instance, began smoking in the front lines at Normandy to steady his nerves, and the habit stuck with him, killing him 49 years later.  Another example is my friend Suzanne’s great-great-grandfather.

James Edward Larkin of Concord, New Hampshire was an officer in Company A of the 5^th New Hampshire Infantry.  He enlisted on September 28, 1861 and was mustered out on October 12, 1864.  During that time he and his unit were in the thick of many battles, including Antietam, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, and Cold Harbor.  He wrote this on December 13, 1862, two days after the Battle of Fredericksburg: 

“Saturday morning I thought there was little prospect of my ever writing to you again.  I wrote a few lines on a card and left it with Calvin to send you in case I should fall—and what saved me but kind Providence.  We advanced for a half mile in the face of Batterie and Infantry where it was almost impossible for a mouse to live, yet I came off safe.  We lost three Captains killed and two Lieutenants—every commissioned officer was killed or wounded except three—Capt. Pierce, Lieut. Sanborn, and myself.  The night after the battle I was in command of the regiment or all there was now of them.  We expect a fight tomorrow.  All the regiment we have now is 72 men and if we have to go in again we shall do the best we can…  I am in an old house tonight and have but a small piece of candle, so you must excuse me for not writing more.  Yours in life and death, J.E. Larkin”

 Two years later, he wrote this: 

“I write you tonight with great anxiety and feelings you can never know and I could not describe them should I try.  I am confident that the great struggle for Richmond is at hand, and a desperate battle is about to be fought…  It has just been decided by orders to proceed to Deep Bottom and that means Richmond.  I think sure if we take it, it will be a glorious thing, but if we fail I cannot tell the results.  I don’t know what force besides our corps is to be engaged.  I trust I shall come out safe but should I fall, you must do the best you can.  I am conscious of the charge and responsibility you have and I feel your great loss should I fall—but the Great Dispenser of Events does all things well and we must be governed by His will; our destinies are in His hands.  I have made arrangements with Doctor Weber to sell my horse and furnish you with the money should you need it and he said he would do it, until you can get the insurance and my back pay.  I shall leave this with the Doctor to send you in case I fall.  God bless you all.  How I long to embrace you and our little darlings once again.  James E. Larkin”

James survived the war to come home to his wife and son and daughter and worked as a painter and then a postmaster.  He wrote this to his daughter in 1872:  

“Fourteen years ago today, you came to us to gladden our life.  It seems but a short time, but in the brief space you have lived, has transpired the most important events of our history.  You can never know what it cost me in feelings to leave you for those three long years of war, every day feeling you might be left fatherless.  But I thank God I was spared to come back and see you develop into womanhood... You can never know until you have children of your own how closely your life and happiness is interwoven with ours.  I send you this ring.  May you live long to wear it and may it remind you of the never ending love of your affectionate father.  James E. Larkin.” 

Sadly, his beloved daughter died in 1884.  His wife followed in 1907.  Who knows what pain he carried?  When he had to bear it alone, it apparently became too much for him.  In 1911 James’ life ended at age 79, at his own hand. 

I suppose only a soldier can understand the pain of a soldier.  My father would tell us stories, terrible stories sometimes, usually late in the evening when his guard was down.  I always sensed that what he told us was just the tip of the iceberg.  It makes my little problems and disappointments and so-called hardships seem so trivial...  God bless our soldiers, one and all.

Ezra Alger, Prisoner at Andersonville

George, an old friend of my husband’s, lost his father when he was just a teenager.  He wanted to know more about his father’s family history and I offered my help.  Going back a few generations, I found the story of Ezra Alger, who fought in the Union Army during the Civil War.

Private Ezra B. Alger was a member of Company I of the 7^th New York Artillery, enlisting on December 16, 1863 in Hudson, New York.  According to the New York State Military Museum website, the 7^th New York Artillery Regiment fought at Spotsylvania Court House, North Anna River, and Totopotomoy Creek, Virginia in May of 1864, suffering over 200 casualties during that month.

The 7^th then fought at the Battle of Cold Harbor, Virginia from June 1-12, 1864.  They suffered 418 casualties there, either killed, wounded, or missing in action—including Ezra Alger.  He was captured by the enemy on June 3, 1864 and was sent to the infamous Andersonville Prison at Andersonville, Georgia.

Andersonville is now a National Historic Site with a huge military cemetery.  According to wikipedia.com, about 45,000 Union prisoners were kept on its 26.5 acres, and nearly 13,000 of them died of starvation and disease and were buried there.  One Union soldier described arriving there like this:  “As we entered the place, a spectacle met our eyes that almost froze our blood with horror… Before us were forms that had once been… stalwart men, now nothing but mere walking skeletons, covered with filth and vermin.  Many of our men, in the heat and intensity of  their feeling, exclaimed, ‘Can this be hell?’”

Wikipedia goes on to say that Andersonville was frequently undersupplied with food, and the prisoners suffered from hunger, exposure, and disease.  The water supply was polluted due to overcrowding and poor sanitation, and the desperate conditions made some of the men turn to violent infighting. 

In the autumn of 1864 after the capture of Atlanta, the surviving prisoners were taken to other, better prison camps, but it was too late for Ezra Alger.  He never came home, and was reported to have died at Andersonville.

Ezra, who was a shoemaker, left a widow and ten children.  In the 1870 federal census for Cohoes, Albany County, New York, his widow lives with nine of their children, and the six oldest work in a cotton mill—the youngest worker being only eleven years old.  In 1880 she is a housekeeper and six of her children still live with her, all working to support the family.  She died in 1888 at age sixty.

Historians are still arguing as to whether the high number of deaths at Andersonville were a result of incompetent prison officials, the general food shortages in the Confederate states, deliberate war crimes, or bad Confederate government policies.  But at any rate, the commandant of the camp, Henry Wirz, was court-martialed and tried for conspiracy and murder after the war, found guilty, and hanged—the only Confederate official to be tried and convicted for war crimes.

An Amish Tragedy

One of the saddest stories I’ve come across in my Amish genealogy research is the story of Jacob Lambright (1840-1881).  Here’s what I know from the census records and the book “An Amish Patchwork” by Thomas Meyers and Steven Nolt:

Jacob was one of eight children of Elizabeth Hupperich and Johann Peter Lembrich, a/k/a Lambrick, a/k/a Lambright.  (Those German surnames were often spelled a dozen different ways in the early days.)  After Elizabeth’s death in 1845, Johann left Germany with the children and settled in Tuscarawas County, Ohio.  Jacob and a brother ended up in Lagrange County, Indiana, where Jacob became a member of the Amish church and, in 1862, married Sarah J. Yoder.  On the marriage license his surname was spelled “Lambrick.”  By the 1870 census Jacob and Sarah owned a farm in Newbury Township where they lived with their three children, and by the 1880 census they were living on a farm in Eden Township with seven children at home.

 

 Here’s what I know from other online researchers (thanks to Rena Markley via Ron Lambright):

In the autumn of 1880, Jacob was helping to harvest grain at a nearby farm, bundling it into sheaves.  After a thunderstorm came and went, he went back out to set up some sheaves and was bit on the foot by a rattlesnake.  He was quite ill for a long time.  Eventually his wife brought him to nearby Wolcottville to spend the winter with his brother.  He came home in the spring, but continued to be in a deep depression.  One evening when it was time to come in for supper, Jacob told the hired men to go on ahead.  When he didn’t come in, and they went to find him, he was found in the woods, where he had hung himself, his dog waiting nearby.

I hesitated to write about Jacob based only on the stories told by others.  What if the suicide story wasn’t true?  But recently I was contacted by Dalonda Young, who was digitizing old records for Lagrange County.  She wondered if I’d be interested in the coroner’s report for Jacob Lambright.  Of course I was!  Here was the documentation I needed, and it meshed with the stories I’d heard:

 “Are you one of the parties who found the deceased?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Where did you find him?”

“…We saw him hanging by the neck in a basswood tree about 2 o’clock this 25 day of April 1881… He was dead when we found him.”

“Had his mind been affected immediately before his death?”

“Sickness disturbed his mind, and deranged him and made him do things that gave symptoms of insanity...  He would rather die than live…  He had been affected similarly during the winter of 1879-1880.”

Other witnesses, including his wife, testified to the same, with Sarah saying, “His mind was much affected at times, and then at times he seemed all right and rational.  When alone he would be worse…  He said he wished he was dead and thought he would kill himself in some way.”

What a tragedy!

I visited Jacob’s grave recently, in an Amish cemetery in Shipshewana, Indiana, where he is buried with his wife Sarah, who never remarried.  His father Johann is buried nearby.  Seeing his final resting place made the story seem more real, and even sadder.  But Jacob’s name is in the history books today as the father and progenitor of all the Amish Lambrights—now a very common Amish name in Northern Indiana.  Today, in the Lagrange County area, he has hundreds of descendants, both Amish and “English.”  His life was short, but his legacy is enduring. 

Typhoid Fever

Recently I wrote about Warren Alwood, my husband’s great grandfather.  Warren’s father Charles Alwood/Allwood died during the Civil War of typhoid fever, and later, Warren’s adopted son Frankie died of it in 1900.  Just what was this scourge that broke up so many families and caused so much grief in those times?

WebMD.com says that typhoid fever is most often caused by the Salmonella typhi or paratyphi bacteria.  The bacteria are deposited in water or food by a human carrier and then spread to others.  It is most commonly transmitted through polluted water supplies, poor public sanitation, or contaminated food, which explains why it was so prevalent on crowded immigrant ships, in overcrowded city slums, and in hastily-formed army camps.

Despite the development of a vaccine in 1901 which was used on the entire U.S. Army before WWI, nevertheless in the 1920s there were over 35,000 deaths in the United States from typhoid, as compared to about 400 cases annually today.  (Worldwide there are still 13 million cases annually, with over half a million deaths.)  The use of antibiotics have greatly reduced the mortality rate.

What did typhoid fever look like?  Encyclopaedia Brittanica (britannica.com) says that after 10 to 14 days the early symptoms appear:  headache, aching, fever, restlessness, and perhaps nosebleeds, cough, and gastric upset.  Fever then develops, reaching 103 to 104 degrees.  By week two, a rose-colored rash appears on the body for four or five days, then disappears.  Then comes hemorrhage of the intestinal walls; after that, mental confusion and delirium sets in.  By week three, the typhoid victim is emaciated, suffers from acute abdominal distress, and the mental disturbance is pronounced.  By week four, for the lucky ones, the symptoms abate and recovery occurs—but if untreated, typhoid fever is fatal in about 25% of cases.

The most famous carrier of typhoid fever, Mary Mallon—“Typhoid Mary”—worked as a cook in New York City in the early 1900s.  When she refused to believe she was a carrier and give up working as a cook, even after repeated warnings, public health authorities had her quarantined for the last 26 years of her life. 

The most famous typhoid death is probably that of Queen Victoria’s husband Albert at age 42—although modern experts lean towards the theory that it was probably something more chronic like Crohn’s disease.  Victoria blamed their eldest son the Prince of Wales’ wild escapades for causing her husband’s death, and she never forgave her son for it—nor did she ever stop wearing black and mourning her beloved Prince Albert.

But most typhoid deaths were of the more ordinary kind, like my husband’s great-great-grandfather Charles Alwood, who died in a Union Army camp in North Carolina in July of 1865, and young Frankie Alwood, who died in 1900 in a small town in Ohio at the tender age of 14.

  

Tuberculosis

I don’t think much about tuberculosis (known as “consumption” in the old days)...  But my Great Grandpa Charles Erickson and his wife Lena had far too much familiarity with it, since it killed three of their adult children—Mina, Edward, and Tecla—as well as several of their grandchildren.

Charles and Lena Erickson’s oldest daughter Mina married  George Edward Lehmann around 1900; I’m not sure when this photo of George and Mina was taken.  Mina, it is said in the family, contracted the disease as a young mother, but refused to go to Edward Tuberculosis Sanitarium in nearby Naperville, Illinois (now Edward Hospital), not wanting to leave her children.  Tuberculosis ended her life in 1924 at age 42.  Three of her children caught it, probably from her, and two of them (Howard and Hazel) died from it a few years after their mother did.  My mother once told me that the third child, a son, survived after aggressive treatment of some kind. 

It is said in the family that Charles and Lena’s son Edward also died of tuberculosis, in 1916.  Charles and Lena’s daughter Tecla contracted it as well, dying in 1937, and giving it to her married daughter Vera, who died at a tuberculosis sanatorium in Minnesota in 1945.  A survey of available records seems to bear all of this out.

I wanted to know more about this disease that took such a toll on my grandfather’s siblings. Was it really so contagious, and was it truly still killing people in the 1940s?

I started at the American Lung Association website at www.lung.org.  I learned there that tuberculosis, or TB, is spread through the air.  When a person with TB coughs, laughs, sneezes, sings, or even talks, the disease can spread. 

It also said this:  “It is not easy to become infected with tuberculosis.  Usually a person has to be close to someone with TB disease for a long period of time.  TB is usually spread between family members, close friends, and people who work or live together.  TB is spread most easily in closed spaces over a long period of time.”  That explains why those with TB were sent to live in sanatoriums until they recovered!  Indeed, it would have been easy for a mother to give the disease to her children.

I learned on the website News-Medical.net that the disease has been with us since ancient times.  The concept of separating TB patients from the general population in sanatoriums began in the late 1800s.  Sometimes rest and improved nutrition brought about a cure.  Although a vaccine was developed in the 1920s, it apparently wasn’t widely used, and there was little else that could be done until the advent of the antibiotic streptomycin in 1944.   

As for the family tradition that one of Mina’s sons was treated aggressively for the disease—News-Medical.net said this:  “Before antibiotics were found effective against tuberculosis, surgical treatment of tuberculosis was common and often lifesaving.”

Typhoid, whooping cough, tuberculosis—all are diseases I’ve seen repeatedly in my family tree.  So many died before their time, in days gone by!  

Mystery Monday: Carl A. Wesley

How can a man just not show up on the census—five times in a row?

I have a friend whose father died when she was young.  Recently I have been trying to find out more about her father’s family—but there seem to be more questions than answers.  Her grandfather’s name was Carl Albert Wesley, and my friend didn’t know much more than that.  My efforts to fill in the blanks have been, well, less than totally successful.

I started with what I knew about him:  the information on his gravestone, photographed for findagrave.com by volunteer Anne Sears.  The stone was found at Little Rock cemetery—the same place his wife and son (my friend’s father) are buried.   But even this was complicated.  There was a second findagrave.com entry for Carl in Newton, Jasper County, Iowa!  Which was his actual place of burial, and which was just a memorial stone?

Next?  Knowing he died in Jasper County, Iowa, I ordered a death certificate.  This told me that Carl Albert Wesley was born on May 9, 1894—in Illinois.  He died at 54 as a result of heart trouble—the same thing that killed his son in the prime of life.  According to the death certificate, Carl was buried in Iowa, which seems to solve that mystery.  Or does it?  The last line of his very faint obituary—does it say the body was moved back to Illinois?  I can’t tell.

The death certificate also gave me the names of his parents:  August Wesley and Augusta Lifske, both born in Germany.  The informant on the death certificate was his wife Lillian, who probably knew as much as anyone did. 

Knowing Carl was born in Illinois but later lived and died in Iowa, and knowing his parents’ names, should have led me to some census records, probably in Illinois or possibly in Iowa.  But none could be found—not for 1900, 1910, 1920, 1930, or 1940—even when I tried the usual search tricks.  How can a man (and his parents) keep such a low profile?  All I found was a city directory for 1947 (the year before his death) for Carl and Lillian, in Newton, Iowa, where he died.  Where was he between 1894 and 1947?

More questions:  What about his marriage to Lillian Wallem?  I haven’t found a marriage certificate (yet), and I don’t even know the year or the place.  Lillian was born and raised in DeKalb or LaSalle County, Illinois, so I suppose the marriage most likely took place there.  Their first and only child, Robert, was born in Iowa in 1946, so that’s a possibility as well.  Another question is this:  Carl had his son Robert when he was 52.  Was this his first marriage and his first child?  That seems unlikely.

So where was Carl Albert Wesley between 1894 and 1947, and what was he doing?  I have a friend who would really like to know.

The Roving Reverend

Even a “man of the cloth” can be a black sheep...  Consider the case of Rev. George Washington Hays.

I used to be church historian at the church where I grew up.   One summer I decided to read all the board minutes, starting at the beginning—1858.  Not far into the project, my eyes were drawn to the word “alcoholic”— and I knew I had a story.   

Rev. Hays was born in Macomb, Illinois in 1837, son of a physician.  He was educated at Maryland College, then Princeton Theological Seminary after he gave up the study of law to prepare for the ministry. 

After finishing up at McCormick Seminary, he got his first pastorate—First Presbyterian Church in Aurora, Illinois, shown in this drawing—in 1863.  It wasn’t long before he married Elizabeth Hannah, daughter of a prosperous local merchant and church board member.  And it wasn’t long after that that the previously healthy Elizabeth suddenly died.

Biographical sketches from his days at Princeton and McCormick, along with ancestry.com, got me this far.  This is where the board minutes come into play. 

In June 1866 Elizabeth’s father stopped attending church.  He was warned by the board not to shirk his duty and to stop circulating reports that the pastor had a hand in Elizabeth’s death.  A hearing took place, pitting the pro-father forces against the pro-pastor forces.  In three days of testimony, the father accused the pastor of drunkenness, refusing to allow a doctor to see Elizabeth, hoping she would die—and giving her a double dose of morphine to speed the process.  (The attending doctor was another church elder, who left the church shortly after Elizabeth’s death.)  The board sided with the pastor and voted 3-1 in January 1867 to suspend Elizabeth’s father until such time as he repented of his slandering, which he refused to do, so in September 1867, he was excommunicated.

Nevertheless, Rev. Hays left under a huge cloud of suspicion in 1868—“leaving the church nearly extinct, having passed through a church fight that left it depleted in numbers and burdened with debt,” so said a church historian.   But what next caught my attention was the almost gypsy-like wanderings of the reverend for the rest of his career.

In 1868 George found work at two churches in  Carroll County, Ohio, where he married a woman named Harriet; they eventually had eight children.  By 1871 they were in Saline County, Kansas.  I found out by writing to his church there that he left there in 1873 due to a scandal; the board minutes said that they debated whether to contact the authorities or allow him to leave quietly, and decided on the latter.

After that, it was on to Henry County, Iowa until 1878; then Washington County, Iowa until 1881; then Scott County, Iowa until 1883; then Black Hawk County, Iowa until 1885.   

In 1885 he settled in California and his wanderings ceased.  Did he find peace at last?  Or had he simply put enough distance between himself and whatever he was running from?  For whatever reason, George stayed nine years at one church in Sonoma County and then seven years at two more—but as “pulpit supply,” not installed pastor. 

By 1903 he retired to a farm in Sonoma County he co-owned with his brother-in-law Horace.  Harriet died about this time, and in 1916 George died in Alameda County. 

I wonder what really happened to his first wife?  And what happened in Saline County that caused him to leave Kansas altogether?  Was George  a good husband and father?  What stories survive about him in the family?  Why did he wander from place to place?  More questions than answers on this one.

Eulogy for My Dad

As I write these words, my thoughts are of my father.  He died twenty years ago yesterday.

Robert Milo Wallin (1923-1993) was an Army infantryman, a platoon leader, in World War II.  He arrived at Normandy a few weeks after D-Day and fought his way across Europe until, a year later, he was part of the Army of Occupation after the war.  During those terrible days on the front lines, he developed a smoking habit, as many did, to steady his nerves.  It was a habit that stuck with him all his life.  Forty-eight years after the war ended, he died of lung cancer.  He suffered greatly at the end, but he died bravely, his final word being “home.”  His faith was strong; he knew where he was going and he wasn’t afraid.

But what I remember most often are the small snippets of life… not the big moments, but the little ones.  Going on vacation in the family Oldsmobile (always an Oldsmobile), Dad wearing his special vacation baseball cap with the salmon on the front.  Dad fiddling with the cars, or making something on the grill, or mowing the lawn with his enormous old farm mower.  Dad taking us to church and always sitting in the fourth row, or serving communion with silent respect.  Dad having his customary 20-minute nap at lunchtime, on the couch, under Grandma’s afghan, nearly every day for forty years.  Dad taking photos in the old black-and-white days and developing them himself, using the downstairs bathroom as his darkroom.  Dad taking on my honors English teacher (and winning) or my physics teacher (and losing—but doing a hilarious, dead-on impression of him after he got home).  Dad at Grandma and Grandpa Wallin’s house every Friday night, lying on the couch watching TV, and then at exactly 9:00 p.m. saying, “You birds get your shoes on—it’s time to go home.”  Dad’s gigantic tomato plants, growing up the trellises that he’d made himself.  Dad talking about the war, late at night, when his guard was down and the stories came out.  The Greatest Generation, indeed.

I remember a conversation I had with my sister a few days after Dad died.  I was just 38 when we lost him, and she was 34.  We felt like we’d been shortchanged, losing him so soon.  My sister said to me, “Would you rather have had our dad for 35 years—or some other dad for longer?”  And we both decided that we wouldn’t have traded him for anyone else, even though he left us too soon.

When I started writing these words today, I said a little prayer:  “Lord, help me write something worthy.”  But I can’t wait until that happens, because it never will.  I can only try to put into words what I feel today, and hope it’s good enough.  Dad, I miss you and I always will.

More Died From Flu Than Bullets

More died from flu than from bullets that year… That was the sad truth in America in 1918.  World War I was raging, but so was an influenza epidemic like the world had never seen.  Theodore Peterson—my great uncle Ted—was an engineering student at the University of Nebraska when duty called.  He never made it to Europe.

Although this photograph taken at his funeral is heart-wrenching to me, so too are the words of his sister Sara.  She wrote this letter to Sture, her sweetheart, on October 16, 1918—just days after Ted died of influenza at an army camp in Fort Grant, Illinois.  Their mother had lost her beloved husband Charles in 1917, and then her beloved son Ted just a year later.

“Mother is keeping up splendid, but the first few days are not near as hard as it is afterwards.  We girls have been talking of sending her out to California for the winter at least.  Carl (my brother) is in San Francisco, you know, and they have been wanting her to come for so long.  This winter will be so long and lonesome for her here.  If she gets out there she may be able to not think so much.  But I haven’t heard her complain—not once.  She is as brave a soldier as any.”

Sara wrote this a week later:

“Though I didn’t go to see the boys off today, I’ve been thinking of the day Ted went.  I don’t believe Ted ever felt happier in all his life than the day he went.  At last he was going to realize what had been his one wish and ambition ever since this war started.  And I can’t help but think, why oh why did he have to die, before he had a chance to accomplish some part of what he was so anxious to do.  It’s hard for us mortals to see the why of these things.  But it must be all to the best, for these things do not just happen, they are brought about by the Divine will.  It’s so hard to believe that is it the best, when we can’t see the why and wherefore.  But after all, surely I can be as brave as Mother, for surely to lose a son must be harder than to lose a brother.  And she says that after all and in spite of all, she wouldn’t had Ted done any other way than he did.  She is glad and proud that he wanted to go.

Sture, I said once about a year ago, that I would rather my brother would go, even if it meant that he never came back, than to have him take the stand of some of our other young men I know.  These words of mine have come to my mind so often these days, and while perhaps at the time I spoke them, I didn’t weigh them as I have since, I know deep in the bottom of my heart I meant them, and now I have come to the test.  And while it almost breaks my heart, dear, I can still say with all sincerity, that I am glad he took the course he did.  I would be unworthy of him and his sacrifice if I felt otherwise.”

For every soldier who died, whether on the battlefield or from the ravages of the flu, there were those who remained to mourn.

What Ever Happened to Agnes Goldberger?

My mother grew up in a household of five children—herself, her three siblings, and a distant relative named Agnes Josephine Goldberger—an orphan from Chicago. 

Agnes came to live with them at age six, after both her parents died, and she lived with them for about ten years.  What a change—from being the pampered daughter of a wealthy Jewish doctor in the big city, to being a farm girl, orphan, and foster child in rural DuPage County!  What was life like for her there?  Was she accepted at home, at school, in the community?  Was she an object of gossip?  Pity?  Or prejudice?  At any rate, at around age sixteen she left the Ericksons and returned to her Jewish relatives in Chicago, never to be seen again… and that’s all I ever knew about her, except that there were hard feelings in the Erickson family after she left.  

I wanted to know more—so recently I did a little research on Agnes.  It turns out that her father, Henry E. Goldberger, was a physician whose parents emigrated from Bohemia to Chicago.  Henry’s first wife, Mary Ingram, died in 1922.  Henry married Agnes Evatt in 1923, when he was 53 and she was 28. 

Baby Agnes was born to Agnes and Henry in Chicago on December 11, 1925.  By 1929, little Agnes’ mother was dead, and by 1933, so was her father, Dr. Goldberger…  Agnes was an orphan at age six.  Somehow she ended up on the DuPage County, Illinois farm of my grandparents, Robert and Clara Erickson.  It seems that Agnes wasn’t actually related to the Ericksons at all—but rather, her father Henry’s first wife, Mary, was a cousin of Clara’s—quite a stretch.  So how did they end up taking her in?  I don’t know.

I have a number of Erickson family photos with Agnes included.  I wonder if she was treated like one of their own, or if she always felt different, unwelcome, an outsider?  My grandpa Robert was a kind and loving man—but my grandma Clara, perhaps not so much. 

Mom always said that Agnes’ family suddenly wanted her back when she turned sixteen and she inherited her father’s money, and so Agnes left them without so much as a thank you—but my grandma Clara was no amateur when it came to holding a grudge, and I think my mother was just parroting what she heard at home.  I’ve always wondered if there was more to the story.  What happened to Agnes Goldberger after she left the Erickson farm around 1942?  Maybe someone out there knows the answer.

Postscript:  Some time after publishing this article here in July 2013, a granddaughter of Agnes found it in a google search. Her mother, one of Agnes' daughters, read it to Agnes. Agnes had changed her name after she left, and she had never shared anything about her childhood for the rest of her life. Sadly, she was still unwilling to talk about it, except to give her daughter permission to tell me that she was the person in my post, and that she was still alive.  

In 2015 an alert reader found a facebook post from a grandson of Agnes which was a memorial to Agnes' recent death. The photo showed her on her wedding day, and the resemblance to my photos was unmistakable. 

In September 2019 I was contacted by another of Agnes' daughters.  After Agnes left my grandparents' farm at sixteen, she went to live with distant relatives, changed her first name, and took on their last name. Eventually she married and had four children.  She never talked about her childhood with her children, and raised them with the belief that she was a natural-born member of the family she went to live with at sixteen.  Her reasons will always remain a mystery.

Agnes died in March 2015 at age 89 in New York.

The Petersons - Sunshine and Shadow

My ancestors ran the gamut from black sheep to outstanding citizen.  But life isn’t fair…  Those who honor faith and family, who play by the rules, sometimes suffer plenty of tragedy anyway.  Consider my Peterson ancestors.

My great-grandparents were Carl Peterson (1861-1917) and Emelia Fryksdal Peterson (1861-1933).  From all indications they were a close and loving family—Carl’s obituary was titled “Another Good Man Gone.”  Eight children were born to them, all surviving to adulthood—but their adult lives were a mixture of sunshine and shadow, with plenty of heartbreak to go around.

Carl Jr. lived in California for a time before returning to his roots and taking over the family farm in Nebraska.  He and his wife had a daughter and a son; their baby boy died of whooping cough at 11 months.  Carl died young, at 53. 

Anna was a schoolteacher.  When her father died at age 57, she took care of her mother and sisters until they were settled with relatives or in homes of their own.  She married at age 37 and after a yearlong honeymoon, settled down to raise a family—only to die at 40, shortly after having her second son.

Theodore (Ted) was an engineering student at the University of Nebraska when he was drafted into the army.  He did not survive World War I; like so many other soldiers, he died of influenza in 1918, in an army camp in Illinois.

Emma lived on her own in Chicago, working as a nurse, and then bought a house in Montgomery, Illinois, where she worked at Copley Memorial Hospital until she retired at age 72.  Emma was very independent—she renewed her driver's license (for the final time) at age 91.  Emma never married, and she died at age 102.

Sara married Sture, her baseball-playing sweetheart, after a seven-year courtship (interrupted by WWI).  They lost their first child shortly after birth—a hidden sorrow that Sara never talked about.  They relocated to Illinois around 1940—Sture had a near-fatal car accident during the transition.  Sara outlived her husband and died in Illinois at age 91.

Signe was a schoolteacher and an excellent artist; some of her paintings survive.  She married a Nebraska farmer and had four children.  Their oldest son Jack died of a brain tumor at age 31, leaving a widow and young daughter.

Hilma, another schoolteacher, married and moved to Minnesota, where she and her husband Harold had three children.  Their only son, Harold Jr., drowned in a lake in Canada at age five.

Therese was bright and educated, but troubled.  After graduating as salutatorian of her high school class and becoming a schoolteacher, she died at age 30 in a mental hospital near Chicago.

This photo shows the four surviving sisters in later life—Emma, Sara, Hilma, and Signe.  They had seen much sorrow, including losing four siblings.  I lived near my grandma Sara and saw her often.  She had learned to take the good and the bad in stride, and was an inspiring example to me of surviving setbacks and appreciating the joys in life.

Justifiable Homicide

A few years ago I did an ancestry binder for an in-law branch of the family which shall remain nameless.  I discovered the story of a genuine black sheep—George Washington Coomes, who was shot to death on September 5, 1896.

George was born in McLean County, Kentucky, on January 16, 1861.  He married Cordelia Martin in 1887; she was 17 and he was 26.  During the course of their thirteen-year marriage they had three sons. 

But all was not well.  According to a newspaper article which ran in The Messenger after his death, George “for the past few years had been leading a very fast life and gained quite an unsavory reputation.”  The paper reported that “for the past year or two, he had almost deserted his family and had been devoting all his time and attention to loose characters.”  After going out drinking with his friends, he sometimes ended up at the house of Sarah Wall, a local lady of the evening. 

As the story is told in The Messenger, George and his friends had spent that day in town, “frequenting saloons,” and later proceeded to Ms. Wall’s house of ill repute at the edge of town.  The newspaper reported that the last time he’d stopped by, he “kicked the panels out of the doors, broke up the furniture, ran the inmates off the place, and slept through the night on the front stoop.”  Ms. Wall had warned him that if he ever returned, she would kill him—and she was as good as her word.  The paper reports that when George refused to leave, even at the urging of his friends, and then made threats to her, she raised a gun, fired it, and after he fell, cocked the gun to shoot again—but he didn’t rise.   Her shotgun had torn a hole in his side as big as a man’s fist.

Sarah Wall was briefly jailed, but released on grounds of self defense.  George was buried at St. Benedict Catholic Cemetery in Beech Grove, Kentucky—or rather, he was buried adjacent to it.  It is said in the family that he could not be buried in the churchyard due to the circumstances of his death, and therefore was buried on the other side of the cemetery fence—a common custom in those days.  There was no marker.

I can’t imagine the anguish of Cordelia, losing her husband in such a public and disgraceful way.  But she remained in McLean County the rest of her life, as did two of her three sons.  In the 1900 census she and her three boys lived with her widowed mother.  By the 1910 census she and the boys were on their own again, farming.  Cordelia never remarried, and she died in 1913 at just 44 years old.  She was buried at St. Benedict’s Catholic Cemetery, too—but most likely not beside her husband.

Skeletons in the Closet

“If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.”

George Bernard Shaw

Whenever I research someone’s family history, whether it’s for fun or for profit, I try to find out how they feel about “skeletons in the closet” before I start.  Everyone thinks they want me to find a few—but perhaps that’s one of those things that sounds better in theory than it turns out to be in practice.

For example:  “La Corriveau,” the infamous Canadian murderess who is my husband’s second cousin six times removed…  Canada in the 1700s…  No problems there.  She is far enough away in time to be harmless, and only a cousin. 

But what about a criminal a little closer to home?  What about a great-grandfather?  How was I to tell a nice older lady that her husband’s great-grandfather, who “died suddenly” in his thirties, was actually shot to death by a prostitute?  Apparently he had been harassing her repeatedly and had a habit of kicking in her door when he got drunk on a Saturday night.  (All this was in a newspaper article about his death that I found online.)   

How about another kind of death—by taking one’s own life?  That hits close to home also.  One client had an ancestor whom she was told was a Civil War hero.  And indeed, he was, and he survived that terrible war in one piece—only to commit suicide years later (according to his death certificate, which I found online) by putting his head in an oven and turning on the gas.

How about marriages?  My most recent client knew that his father had been married once before—there were three children from the first marriage and two from the second marriage.  What he didn’t know (until I found a marriage record online) was that between the two, his father had been married a third and fourth time—before he married my client’s mother—to a woman named “Ida” and another one named “Margaret.”  My client may have half-brothers and sisters out there that he doesn’t know about!

One client knew that his mother had borne a baby out of wedlock before she married his father—a baby who didn’t survive.  What he didn’t know was that his mother abandoned the baby at an orphanage to die.  (For a dollar apiece, I got a copy of the birth and death certificates.)  The birth father’s name was listed on both documents, and I found out more about him quite easily on ancestry.com.   He wasn’t anyone my client knew—but what if he had been?  And I wonder if the birth father’s relatives and/or descendants know about this baby?

“Insane asylums”—that’s what they called them back in the day.  I’ve had more than one client who was surprised to find out that he had family members who spent time in one.  One client said, “So that’s why my great-uncle wasn’t in World War I!”…  How did I find this out?  On the man’s 1917 WWI draft card, under occupational information, authorities had stamped “Insane Patient—Gowanda State Hospital.” 

I recently discovered, after ordering a copy of her death certificate, that one of my great-aunts died of dysentery at Elgin State Mental Hospital—an infamous ‘asylum’ located near where I grew up.  That’s not the way I heard her story when I was young!

Skeletons in the closet…  Perhaps they’re highly entertaining when you find them in other people’s closets, but less so when they’re found in your own.  What do you think?

Big Sister Without a Name

My father, Robert Milo Wallin (1923-1993) spent nearly all of his life thinking he was the oldest child in his family.  But things aren’t always what they seem to be, particularly in genealogy. 

Dad was born in Nebraska in 1923, in a hospital rather than at home—very unusual for that place and time.  As the years went by, he was joined by Helen in 1926, Richard in 1927, and then little Janet in 1932. 

From early childhood, a big part of Robert’s identity was his position as oldest child.  He was a typical firstborn—responsible, mature, hardworking, serious—a liaison between the adults and the younger kids, trying to set a good example.  (Those of you who are firstborn, as I am, know what I mean.)  He went off to World War II, writing letters home to his parents and younger siblings—reassuring his parents and sisters and trying to keep his brother from ending up on the front lines like he was.  (A story for another day.)

The years went by, until Dad was a businessman in his sixties, applying for a passport so he could attend a conference in London.  Part of the process was obtaining a certified copy of his birth certificate—and when it arrived, there it was in black and white:  “Number of children of this mother born alive and now living -1.  Born alive but now dead -1.”

Dad then remembered hearing long-ago whispers among his aunts about a baby girl who died.  And suddenly he understood the likely reason his mother went to a hospital when he was born (and a good thing, since he was a breach birth).  Why hadn’t his older sister ever been talked about openly as he was growing up?  Why wasn’t she remembered, and mourned?  Probably because it wasn’t the Swedish way to “dwell on the past” or “stir up sad memories.”  So, Dad let it lie, and now he is gone, too…  Recently I decided it was time to find out more, if I could.

Although my father died many years ago, his youngest sister is still alive.  I asked her what she knew about this mysterious child, and she said that she had heard whispers, too—but she had always been too hesitant to bring up the subject with her mother.  She asked that I let her know what I found out.  It seemed like I wasn’t the only one who wanted to know more.

Then I went to my favorite resource for vital records info and followed the instructions for obtaining old Nebraska birth and death records.  No luck there, however.  I was told that neither event was recorded—or if they were, the records are lost now.     

I wish I could have discovered more about this little baby girl, who was my aunt.  But this is one sad event from long ago that seems destined remain a mystery.