Another Step in the Right Direction

Last year at about this time I wrote one of my most personal blog posts ever - about my late brother, Bruce.  Here is a link to that post, with a postscript added at the end...  It's another step in the right direction.

Remembering Bruce

Levi Newton Scott, In War and in Peace

I found another great story on my latest client’s tree…  This one concerns one of his 3^rd great grandfathers, Levi Newton Scott. 

Levi was born in Tennessee in 1841, fourth son of Anthony “Hanty” and Lucinda Barnes Scott.  (Family tradition has it that Lucinda was Cherokee Indian, but that remains to be proven.)  He grew up in a large farm family that moved from Wayne County, Tennessee to Dallas County, Missouri in 1854.

Levi served in the Union forces during the Civil War (as did his father).  Familysearch.com turned up three different service records for Levi.  The first shows him in Company G of the Dallas County Regiment of the Missouri Home Guard, where he served from June to September 1861.  The Missouri History Museum website (www.civilwarmo.org) tells us this about the Missouri Home Guards:

Created in the summer of 1861 by General Nathaniel Lyon, the Home Guard were to stay at home and go into action only to defend their neighborhoods. Around 15,000 Home Guard were enlisted.  They were armed by the Union government but received no pay unless on active duty.  They wore no uniforms, and only 10,000 troops actually received weapons—the rest used their own.  Camp gear and food were supplied for some when on active duty.  Approximately 241 Home Guard companies were formed, but they were disbanded in late 1861. 

By 1862 Levi was married for the first time, to Elizabeth Ann Box.  They had at least three children in the next six years. 

In the meantime, Levi ended up back in the military—pressure must have been strong for volunteers, even married men.  This time, he was in Company M of the 8^th Cavalry Regiment, Missouri State Militia.  The regiment saw action all over Arkansas and Missouri—scouting, attacking trains, capturing a fort, and other operations.  He also spent some time in Company H of the 14^th Cavalry Regiment in April 1862 to March 1863.  The 1890 veteran’s census tells us that  he served three years (1862-65) during the “war of the rebellion” and that he was injured—but at least he survived.  Civilwararchive.com tells us that the 8^th Cavalry Regiment lost 77 enlisted men to war injuries and 131 enlisted men to disease during the course of the war. 

A few years after the war, Elizabeth died at age 25.  Levi found himself a widower at age 27 with three young children—Sarah, Melissa Ann, and Henry.  As was often the case in those days, within a year the young father had found a new mother for his children.  His second wife, Mary Catherine Hoover, helped him raise his three children, and they had two more—James and Cora.  By the 1870 census they had settled down to spend the rest of their lives farming in Dallas County, Missouri. 

The Veteran’s Schedule of the 1890 Census lists Levi as a Civil War veteran with an invalid pension.  His disabilities included catarrh (chronic sinus problems) and “injured with powder, right leg.”  Pension index cards indicate that he received a pension starting in 1880, and it was increased in 1912.

 Mary Catherine died in 1904, but Levi was a widower for only a few years, marrying a third time in 1907, to Caladonia Russell Engle, who outlived him.

Levi and his family must have been proud of his wartime service to his country; his gravestone proudly displays the details.  He died in 1915 at age 74 and was buried at Reynolds Cemetery, next to his second wife.

Photos:   Connie Chrisman Hatch on findagrave; ancestry.com; Amanda424 on findagrave.

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:

Military Monday: Jacob Heilman

My husband’s mother has three great-grandfathers who served in the Civil War.  One died (Charles Alwood, whom I wrote about previously), and two others survived.  One of those who survived was Jacob Heilman.

Jacob was born in Bavaria in 1819 and came to the United States in 1844, according to a book of historical sketches published in 1976 by the Henry County, Ohio Historical Society.  (A New York Passenger list I found supports this.)  He came to Ohio in 1847 with a brother and married Maria Baker there in 1850.  They had twelve children—four sons and eight daughters—eight of whom survived him. 

According to his service record on ancestry.com, Jacob was a Private in Company F of the Ohio 68^th Infantry Regiment, and his grave marker confirms that fact.  He would have been in his forties at the time—not a young man!  It was said that his unit marched over 7,000 miles and rode trains or steamboats another 6,000 miles, and that his regiment was in every Confederate state except Florida and Texas.    

There are good histories of his unit, and they bear this out.  I consulted “Dyer’s Compendium” online and got some details.  The 68^th started out at the Battle of Fort Donelson and took part in nearly every major battle and siege of the war, including the Battle of Shiloh, the siege of Vicksburg, and Sherman’s March to Atlanta.  The regiment lost two officers and 48 enlisted men in battle, and another one officer and 249 enlisted men to disease, for a total of 300 deaths.

The actual dates of Jacob’s service are sketchy.  The 1975 biographical sketch (written by Jacob’s great-grandson Lyle Heilman) says that Jacob enlisted in 1861 when the war broke out and served until the war was over.  Maria had a daughter in May 1862, but the baby could have been born after Jacob left for the war.  Dyer’s history shows that his unit had a long furlough in early 1864—but judging by the birth date of Jacob’s son John (June 1864), Jacob was home by September 1863.  A draft register listing him as “discharged” in June 1863 bears that out.  So the extent of action Jacob actually saw is uncertain—but whatever his length of service, it was enough for Jacob to apply for, and receive, an Civil War veteran invalid pension in March 1873. 

It is said in the family that he was blind the last twelve years of his life; he died in 1907, with his wife following in 1912.

I found Jacob’s grave a few years ago at Florida Cemetery in Henry County, Ohio.  My husband and I put a flag on it before taking a photograph.  I was pleased to see the G.A.R. marker there.  In an original photo of him which survives, and which I was fortunate enough to borrow from my husband’s cousin Dale Garver, even in his old age Jacob looks brave and strong—a survivor. 

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. 

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.

My Graveyard Kit

Is it weird that I have a graveyard kit?  How else can you go grave hunting in an organized and well-equipped manner?  Mine is stored in a pink bucket with a decal on it.  (I’m a very girly grave hunter.)

The bucket contains all the stuff I need for proper gravestone hunting (except a goodly supply of water—never leave home without a goodly supply of water).  The bucket contains:

• A notebook and a pen, along with any information that I had the foresight to gather together beforehand.
• My camera, of course.  How else can I take photos to upload to findagrave.com?
• A little pink flashlight, for casting shadows on gravestones for better pictures.  The experts advise a big mirror for that purpose, but that won’t fit into my bucket.
• Grass snips, a trowel, and a whisk broom, for quick cleanup work as required.
• Cotton gloves.
• A second bucket just like the first one, for hauling water if there’s a faucet.  (But I learned the hard way to also bring plenty of gallon jugs of water, especially when going to very old or abandoned cemeteries.)
• A stiff-but-soft scrub brush that fits well into my husband’s hand.
• Liquid soap—a special kind.  (I did a lot of research on this subject.)  It’s called “Orvus” and it has three main uses, so I’m told:  Washing horses, washing antique fabrics, and washing gravestones.  Fancy that!…
• Wet wipes.  I like having clean hands when I use my camera (and all the rest of the time, too, actually).
• A big Ziploc bag, for kneeling upon to take photographs.  I don’t like dirty knees either.
• Bug repellent.  I once went wandering through some tall grass in the woods in cropped pants, looking for a few old gravestones which made up a small old family cemetery...  I came out with about a hundred bug bites on my lower legs.  I’m lucky I didn’t end up with Lyme disease!
• White chalk for marking trees and driveways for navigational purposes.  Don’t want to walk the same rows twice if I don’t have to.
• Little American flags.  I like to leave them at the graves of veterans.

Okay, so is this normal, or weird?  All genealogists love graveyards, right?  I once saw a coffee mug for genealogists that said, “I’m only interested in dead people.”  Well, yes, but I wouldn’t say only…  

Grave Hunting in the Heartland

It was my Grandma Wallin who first took me to a graveyard—as a recreational activity—when I was about eight. I’ve liked graveyards ever since.

Recently my husband and I were traveling to Holmes County, Ohio, and I thought we might as well visit a few graveyards on the way. His maternal ancestors are buried in a string of graveyards stretching from northern Indiana to central Ohio. So, armed with my “graveyard kit,” we spent a day hunting tombstones.

First stop: Eddy Cemetery, DeKalb County, Indiana—resting place of Charles and Elizabeth Alwood, my husband’s great-great-grandparents. Charles was a private in the Indiana Volunteers during the Civil War. He left seven children at home, the oldest a boy of twelve. His unit fought its way through the south, eventually ending up in North Carolina, where they occupied Raleigh and then cooled their heels waiting for the war to end. After it did, but before he could get back home, Charles died of typhoid in an army camp there. Elizabeth lived forty more years as a widow, running their farm as well as she could. We left a flag at his grave.

Second stop:  Independence Cemetery, Defiance County, Ohio—resting place of John Jr. and Mary Ann Garver, my husband’s great-great-grandparents.  There we had the great pleasure of meeting up with the woman who cared for this church cemetery along with her husband.  We had corresponded with her ahead of time and determined that her husband is a distant cousin of my husband, and she surprised us with an envelope of photographs which were ours to keep.

Third stop:  Florida Cemetery, Henry County, Ohio—final resting place of Jacob Heilman and his family—once again, my husband’s great-great-grandparents.  Jacob, an immigrant from Bavaria, was in the 68^th Ohio Infantry in the Civil War, and theirs is an incredible tale.  His unit fought in every Confederate state except Florida and Texas, and during the course of the war, he marched over 7,000 miles and rode trains or steamboats another 6,000.  He lived to tell the story, going on to have twelve children—six before the war and six after—and he died at 88.  After taking some photographs, we put a flag on his grave and were on our way.  We had a long drive to our next stop.

Fourth stop:  Walters Cemetery, Morrow County, Ohio—final resting place of John Garver Sr. and his wife Elizabeth—my husband’s great-great-great grandparents.  John Sr. was born in 1795 and died in 1879.  He fought in the Pennsylvania Militia in the War of 1812, and was given a 40-acre piece of government homesteading land (“bounty land”) for his service and a pension in his old age.  Three of their daughters predeceased them and are buried with them—all three died in the 1840s, at ages 20, 16, and 2.

Not every husband would spend an entire day finding cemeteries and cleaning gravestones for his wife, especially on vaction...  Kudos to mine for being such a good sport!