What’s Buzzin’, Cousin!

I found my second cousin, Gayle F., from a branch of my family tree that I didn’t even know existed only a few months ago!  Our grandmothers were sisters.  And she has given to me an incomparable gift — knowledge of and pictures (!!!) of family members, including my grandmother, that were mysterious to me only a few months ago (see “My Mysterious Grandmother” post, May 8th).

Gayle is the daughter of Elayne Guss (see “A Shocking Discovery” post, Sept. 28th).  I found her through the obituary of her mother who died in 1973, her father who died in 2003, and, of all things, Facebook.  I first had a false start, finding another woman with the same name in a nearby city.  However, after running out of leads on Google and other sources, it occurred to me to try Facebook.  There were 5 Gayle F.’s.  She was in the right city, about the right age, and when I looked at her “friends”, I saw two with the last name of her mother (her maiden name).  It had to be her.  I sent her a note on Facebook with her mother’s name in the title, just to get her attention.  I told her who I was and how we were related.  She wrote back that night.  Sure enough, I had found my second cousin!

Over the next week or so, we corresponded several times.  “You have a lot of cousins out here,” she wrote.  I told her about my dad and my siblings and their children, and about my own young children.  I scanned the letters and cards to my dad (see “My Mysterious Grandmother” post, May 8th) from her mother, Elayne, and her mother’s and my father’s mutual Aunt Edythe, and our mutual great-grandmother Jewell Kabel.  I explained that I had never known about her entire wing of the family, and she read my blog entry that mentioned that I had only a single confirmed photo of my grandmother, Wilfred “Billie” Smith Hall, and that explained about the cigar box with the name Edythe Smith written in faint pencil on the bottom, with all the unidentified pictures inside.

And one evening only a few days after I had first contacted her, I received an e-mail from her titled, “First Picture of Many”:

“Janet – Here is the first picture.  Probably the one that you wanted the most.  This is Billie as a young woman . . .”

Wilfred "Billie" Smith Wedding Day June 1, 1922

Ethel (holding Vera), Billie & Vera Smith circa 1909

I opened it and tears came to my eyes.  A young woman of 20 stands in a garden, dressed in a white dress in the style of the 1920’s.  She holds flowers up to her cheek and a white ribbon is woven into her hair.  It is a picture of my grandmother on her wedding day in 1922.

Later the same night came another four pictures, including the only pictures I have ever seen of my great-grandfather John Smith from Canada (Billie’s father).  There was also a picture of Billie and Ethel as children, probably around 7 and 8 years old.  Ethel holds a baby named Vera who Gayle has never heard of, and who hasn’t shown up in any of my research.  (She likely died young, as many infants did during that era.)  I look into the face of Billie in the picture (below) and it’s like looking at a picture of myself when I was that age.  Honestly, I am a dead ringer for my grandmother, at least as a child!

She also sent me pictures of my great grandparents John Smith & Jewell Lies Smith (see the link on the left) and my great-great grandparents Peter Lies & Caroline Schorr Lies (see the link on the left).

Gayle then sent me pictures of and information about the next generation of children, my father’s cousins.  More pictures of the succeeding generations will be coming soon.  And I am sending her the pictures I have of my dad, and of my children, my siblings and their children, and their children’s children.

And thus, through genealogy and the Internet, I now have pictures of and information about “my mysterious grandmother” and other family members that I would never have had otherwise.

This is why I do genealogy!

A Shocking Discovery

I discovered over the weekend that my father’s first cousin, Elayne Guss, committed suicide.  Even though I didn’t know her (or even know of her until a few months ago), it still surprised and saddened me to discover the news.  I knew she died young, age 47, on the day after Christmas back in 1973, and I’ve been searching periodically for her obituary.  I requested microfilm of the Bulletin (Bend, OR) through an inter-library loan, but was unsuccessful in getting it.  Then last week, I subscribed to the RootsWeb list serve for Deschutes County, Oregon where I knew from the SSDI that she died.  I put out an inquiry on the list serve for her obituary, and within a few days, I got a response from a member of a genealogy group in La Pine, Oregon, who was able to find it.  (Genealogists are such a generous group!)

The obituary starts out innocently enough, but mid-way through, it contains this sentence: “Her death Wednesday evening at her home was the result of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.”  How tragic!  My new Oregon friend also produced the short blurb from the paper announcing that the death was ruled a suicide.  And after reading her obituary, I was able to find an obit for her husband, who remarried within a year of her death and died in 2003.

And now I wonder if my father knew of her suicide.  I doubt it.  Elayne had written my dad a few letters in the ’60’s, but I don’t think my father did much to keep the contact going (see my post from May 8, 2009).

The obit provides new information about Elayne’s children, my second cousins, and I will now research them.  This branch of my family tree, which was completely unknown to me until earlier this year (see my post from May 8, 2009) has proven to be interesting and tragic.

A Time-Saving Tool for Newspaper Research

Okay, it’s been way too long since I’ve blogged.  Life has been busy.  But look at what I’ve developed here in the past month, to assist me in my upcoming trip to Western New York.  This is a timeline of the newspapers that existed in Northern Chautauqua and Cattaraugus counties, where many of my ancestors lived over the past two centuries.  Included in the timeline are the lives and major events of my ancestors who lived there.

As any researcher knows, time at a research facility is often limited, especially when you’re traveling to conduct research.  So the idea of this timeline is to provide a visual tool that you can use to match up the events of your ancestors’ lives with the publications that existed in the area where your ancestors lived.  With this tool, you no longer have to spend so much time figuring out what publications were in print on any given date.  And you won’t make the mistake of requesting publications on particular dates when they weren’t in print, or missing publications that might have existed when an event occurred.  This is especially useful in rural areas, like Chautauqua and Cattaraugus counties, where newspapers appeared and disappeared with alarming frequency.

You could also add major events in American history to see how the newspapers that your ancestors were reading were covering them.  For example, you could add April 14, 1865, the date of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, to check newspapers after that date to see what your ancestors were reading about the tragedy.  If the train that carried Lincoln’s body from Washington to Illinois after the assassination traveled through the state of your ancestors, you might wish to see how the local newspapers covered the many thousands of people who lined the train tracks to catch a glimpse of the fallen leader and the outpouring of grief that accompanied that event.  Other important dates might include those of particular battles in the wars in which your ancestors fought, the dates that wars ended, and other dates that are important to our nation’s military and political history, like Jan. 1, 1863, the date of the Emancipation Proclamation and Nov. 19, 1863, the date of the Gettysburg Address.  For me, I’m including Sept. 1901, the month when President William McKinley was shot at the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo, and subsequently died.  You might include Oct. 28 – 29, 1929, the date of the stock market crash, and April 4, 1968, the date of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.  And you could also include the dates of local historical events, or events in history of particular interest to you or relevance to your ancestors.

To obtain a template for the timeline, go to http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/TC010162661033.aspx.  For information on the dates of publication of the newspapers in Western New York, I used the website of the New York State Library at http://www.nysl.nysed.gov/nysnp/.  That information is available for all states at the Library of Congress website, at http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/search/titles/.

Here is a snapshot of my timeline:

Timeline of Newspapers in Northern Chautauqua & Cattaraugus Counties

My Mysterious Grandmother, Wilfred Hall

Francis & Wilfred Hall, 1920's

You wouldn’t think a woman could get so mysterious in only two generations, but my grandmother, born Wilfred Harriet Smith — yes, that’s “Wilfred” — managed to do just that!  And did I mention tragic?  Of course in the early 20th century, many families had tragic stories to tell.  But for me, her story has always seemed profoundly mysterious and sad.

My father Warren Hall mentioned her very rarely, but he gave my sister the middle name “Wilfred” in her honor.  I think her memory was just too painful for him to discuss.  And he didn’t actually know her.  So all I knew as a child was that my grandmother was nicknamed “Billie” and died soon after my father was born from what my father called a “tubercular heart”.  And I knew the names of her parents, John Smith & Jewell Lies (a great name!).  My father died at age 43 when I was 11, so I never got the chance to quiz him more, and when I asked my mother more about what she knew, long after my father had died, she seemed to only know about my grandmother’s tragic death soon after my father’s birth, and that my father’s father was so bereft at her loss that my father was left in the hospital for weeks while they figured out what to do.  (My father was raised mostly by his father’s parents, and his father went on to re-marry and have another child, my father’s half-sister Judy.)

So, what have I learned since then?  When I was going through my mother’s papers after she died some four years ago, I discovered a few letters to my dad from people whose names I had never heard.  The letters were heartbreaking, saying things like “I still would like to get to know you” and “We’re still family”.  I was uncertain how they were connected, but since the names were so mysterious, I figured they must have been from his mother’s family.

It turned out that Wilfred had two sisters!  Neither of my parents had ever mentioned that my dad had aunts on his mother’s side.  And his grandmother Jewell had remarried after her husband’s untimely death when their daughters were still young.  “Aunt Ethel” Davis, “Aunt Edythe” Lantz, and a cousin “Elayne” Guss, along with “Grandmother Kabel”, all living in California by then, were reaching out to my father in the late 1950’s and 1960’s with at least a few letters and Christmas cards.  There is an indication that my father wrote back once, but it is clear that most of the reaching was from their end.  It remains a mystery to me why he never mentioned them, and why he didn’t want to have more contact with them — probably because of the chaos in his life at the time — but that is another story.

In any case, unfortunately, it seems that almost all the members of this family died young.  With the exception of Grandma Kabel who died at age 88, Wilfred’s father and her sisters and the children who I have found so far (my father’s cousins), all died in their 30’s, 40’s, and at best, their 50’s.  I’m now on the hunt for the next generation, my second cousins.  Stay tuned on that.

What else do I know about Wilfred Harriett Smith Hall?  She was born on Feb. 17, 1902 purportedly in Buffalo, NY.  Her death certificate and marriage license both state that she was born in Buffalo, but neither the Buffalo City Clerk nor the New York State Department of Health can produce her birth certificate.  The Buffalo papers of the time did not typically report births.  The clergyman who signed her marriage license in 1922, a Martin Walker, show up in Lutheran records, which makes sense since I know that her maternal grandfather Peter Lies (who owned a hat shop in Buffalo in the 1870’s – 80’s) was of German descent.  I’m researching Buffalo Lutheran records, awaiting results.  Wilfred’s father was John Smith.  He was from St. Catherines, Ontario, Canada, and was of German descent.  He emigrated to Buffalo in 1884 when he was 13, and married Jewell in 1899.  He was a butcher, and died of pulmonary tuberculosis in 1912 at age 41.

Wilfred was married in 1922 at age 20 to Francis Hall, also age 20.  I haven’t found marriage announcements in the local paper.  She apparently had signficant health problems and my father, her first and only child, wasn’t born until 1932, a full ten years after her marriage, certainly unusual for the time.  She died on July 18, 1932 at age 30 only 22 days after my father was born.  Her cause of death is listed as “mitral stenosis”, which, according to the death certificate, she had for over 5 years.  Contributing causes were listed as “Pericarditis” and “Dilation of heart with myocarditis (non-periperal)/cardiac condition chronic”.  I can imagine those who loved her worrying whether her heart could make it through the birth of her child.  They must have been thrilled when she delivered her baby, only to be devastated with her loss only three weeks later.

While Wilfred’s marriage license and her signature on it clearly says “Wilfred”, both her death certificate and the death announcement in the Buffalo paper give her name as “Winifred”.  It is clear that throughout her life her name was often listed as “Winifred”, a common name for women at the time.  I can only assume that she and her husband grew tired of correcting it.

The biggest find is this wonderful photo of her and my grandfather Francis Hall.  My half-aunt Judy Hall Morehouse (who I only met via e-mail a couple of years ago) made the positive i.d. of her father in this photo, and we can assume that the woman is Wilfred.  The photo was in a cigar box of unidentified photos contained among my mother’s artifacts.  Written on the bottom of the box in very light pencil (I nearly missed it!) is the maiden name, Edythe Smith, of one of my father’s aunts.  The original photo is small, only about 2 in. x 3 in., and the images are distant.  And yet just look at them!  To me, they appear fun, deeply in love, and with all the style of the 1920’s era.  It makes me want even more to have known them both.

The only other positive photo of Wilfred is a very grainy and deteriorated photo of a young child dressed in overalls and looking down.  Written on the back is “Billie Smith, 1906, Las Vegus, Mexico” — another mystery.  These are the only positively identified photos of my grandmother that I know of.

It is interesting to me to discover the genealogical details and put together the tidbits that I can from her mysterious and tragic life.  It seems to me that in only two generations, my grandmother has nearly vanished!

Preparing for Summer Research in Western New York

I’m planning almost a week in Western New York (where I grew up) for a visit with family this July.  While I’m there, I’m very excited to (hopefully) take some time out for family history research.  Both my parents’ families are mostly from Western New York, with my mother’s family coming mainly from Buffalo, and my father’s mostly from rural Cattaraugus County.  I plan to focus my research on local newspapers, especially those from rural Cattaraugus County.  These papers are mostly unavailable anywhere except in the area.  (I’m planning on researching the larger Buffalo papers at the Library of Congress in DC before the trip to then concentrate the valuable time when I’m there on the papers that are unavailable elsewhere.)

I found an invaluable list at the website of the New York State Library that lists all the newspapers ever published in each county, and the years of publication, http://www.nysl.nysed.gov/nysnp/.  Most of the newspapers that I am interested in are not available except in person at the New York State Library, and I am not planning a trip to Albany anytime soon.  However, the list tells me exactly what years each newspaper was published, and from there, I plan to take my list with me on my trip to Reed Library at S.U.N.Y. College at Fredonia (Chautauqua County) (where I went to college), which has a good local collection of historical newspapers from Chautauqua and Cattaraugus counties.

Now, I need to organize what I’m looking for.  I am developing a timeline from 1820 through 1932 (when my father was born) with bars indicating the lives and major events (births, marriages, deaths) of my ancestors who were living in Cattaraugus and Chautauqua County during this time period.  And I’ll include bars indicating the publication dates of the newspapers of the county (some of which published only briefly).  I’ll look for newspaper announcements or other information surrounding the personal events of my ancestors (I am uncertain how much I will find in this category).  And then, of even greater interest to me, I plan to look up the newspapers from the dates of some of the major events in American history that occurred during the lifetimes of my ancestors.  For example, my great-great-grandfather Warren R. Hall and great-great-grandmother Marietta “Tick” Hall (nee Blackney) (the granddaughter of Isaac Rugg, a Revolutionary War soldier) lived in Cattaraugus County when Abraham Lincoln was assassinated.  I am interested in seeing the newspapers that they might have read, and how the tragic news was covered in this rural area.  And what of the news of the assassination of President McKinley at the Pan Am Exposition in nearby Buffalo in 1901?  And what about the stock market crash of 1929?  How did that event and the subsequent Depression impact the lives of these rural communities?  And I’m always interested in seeing the general news of the day — likely much news about farming — and the advertisements.

I’m looking forward to learning a lot!

Today I start my family history/genealogy blog!

So, today I start my blog on family history/genealogy! I plan to blog about what I’m working on in genealogy, questions, comments and tips, and especially, my particular interest: how family history intersects with American history. I believe this is a critical aspect of family history that is often overlooked as people get lost in the data and the journey of finding new personal information. I am interested in how our ancestors’ lives intersect with American history and the insight we can gain from those intersections about our ancestors, and about American history. I believe these connections to events and movements in American history can be found in every family, whether they arrived in the Colonial era, in slave ships, or in the waves of immigrants of the late 19th century and early 20th century. So look for that particular perspective in my coming postings.

Welcome to my blog!