Family History Challenge - Day 10

 

This one is another ancestry dot com success story. My mother-in-law is the young woman seated here by her adoptive parents. As the family story goes, she was adopted by her maternal aunt and her husband after she was removed from her parents' home due to domestic violence. She had a pretty happy childhood, but she always had one regret -- she had a younger brother that she never heard from again.

I posted this story on ancestry dot com, and sometime later, someone responded with "the rest of the story," as Paul Harvey used to say. 

 

Samuel Wells Samuels: I am writing this assuming that you are related somehow to Sue Sanford. I believe (and have yet to research) that Samuel Sanford was adopted by Archibald Ellsworth, whom Harriet Coglizer got together with after she probably left her husband. I am making this assumption because my fiance is the grandson of Samuel Wells Ellsworth, who's mother was Harriet Coglizer and who's father was Archie Ellsworth. I hope this helps! I'm glad you posted this story, it cleared things up for my search as well.

 

It's so amazing how we can collaborate with people we've never even met to solve these family history mysteries.

 

Family History Challenge - Day 9

 

 

My great grandfather, John Young Smith - the one who made the same trip to Texas twice, first to witness a wedding and later to get married himself - was a building contractor, and apparently a fine one. When Park County, Wyoming was established in 1911, one of the first orders of business was to build a courthouse. John Young Smith was the contractor on that building, shown below. It took about a year to build and cost $45,000. The clock tower was added later. Isn't this a fine example of early 20th century design and construction?

 

Photo Credit: Richie Diesterheft from Chicago, IL, USA - Park County Court House Cody, WY via Wikipedia

Family History Challenge - Day 7

 

 

 

 

So a couple of days ago I told you about my grandmother who moved west on the train in 1900 and eloped with her friend's brother. Yesterday I told you about Howard Shonkwiler, who dropped dead in front of the Post Office. This is his family (parents and siblings) in 1893. I had seen the photo in my grandmother's collection but I don't have a copy. But thanks to ancestry dot com, now I do. Ancestry has made the search for my ancestors so much easier.

 

And just BTW - I love these old timey photographs. I love how they brought all the dining room chairs into the front yard for the photo... And how someone decided that sitting on his horse was the appropriate pose (or did he just happen to be riding by?) A mystery for certain. And then there's how everyone in the photo is looking a different direction, like they weren't ready or didn't know where the photographer was. Odd, isn't it?

 

 

 

 

Family History Challenge - Day 6

 

 

 

 

 Today's story is about the headlines. In scanning some photos recently, I found this picture of my great grandfather's obituary. I'll let it speak for itself, but I will say that as I read it, I wondered about the feelings of the recently bereaved.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Family History Challenge - Day 5

 

This couple are my grandparents. I've told a bit of their story before, but this one is a love story.

My grandmother was 3 years old and living with her parents in a house on the family homestead in Ohio. One cold morning, her father got up to stoke the fire and went back to bed. Perhaps he was a bit careless. A rug near the fire caught fire and though the family was safe, the house burned to the ground.

Apparently the farm wasn't really adequate to support all the families now living on the homestead, or perhaps my great grandfather was just tired of farming, but he decided to move west to look for a better life. The family moved west by train, and my grandmother remembered the trip as both exciting and a bit scary.

 

In their new home, my grandfather was able to give all of his girls (there were several) a college education. My grandmother studied and became a teacher at what was then Cheney Normal School. One summer, she was invited to visit one of her classmates and met the girl's handsome brother. Soon, a romance blossomed between them. However, her father refused to permit their marriage because he said that he didn't educate his daughters for them to become farm wives - he didn't want any of them to have to work that hard.

 

Unwilling to accept that answer, the couple eloped and was married by the Justice of the Peace in a neighboring county. This is the couple on their wedding day, as you can see from the caption, which is in my grandmother's handwriting.

Family History Challenge - Day 4

 

 

This was my paternal grandmother's family (she is the youngest, in the center between her parents.). This couple met on the wagon train moving west. Their friends fell in love and decided to get married - except that they were in Oklahoma, which was then officially Indian Territory - and no Americans could get married there. My great grandparents went along on the 7-day wagon ride as chaperones and witnesses. Apparently, they fell in love on the trip, because a week later, the same 4 people made the same 7-day trip for another wedding.

Family History Challenge - Day 3

 

 

 

 

The girl standing in the center of this photo was my mom. I think this picture was taken about 1941 or 42, but there isn't a date on my copy, so I'm not sure. My mom was the most hard-working person I ever knew. When she was eight, her mom found out she was expecting. Again. Of at least 4 previous pregnancies, my mom was the only baby that survived. When she found out she was expecting, the doctor immediately put her on bed rest. There was just one problem: It was harvest season and there were 50 or more farm hands to feed three times a day. No worries. Grandad simply moved Grandma's bed into the kitchen so she could supervise my 8-year old mother doing the cooking.... Yup, three meals a day for 50 men for several months. 

 

Sometime around 1936 my grandparents lost the farm when the banks failed (which is a whole different story.) They moved to "town" and grandad got a job with the county road crew driving big machinery. Grandma, with two toddlers by this time, took in boarders (I know one of the school teachers lived with them, along with my great grandmother from Sunday's post.) One day, grandad was working in the railroad right of way when he and his tractor were struck by a train. He was out of work for more than a year as the county and the railroad fought over who was going to pay his medical bills and rehabilitation. There was no unemployment or disability insurance in those days. The family was already in financial straits because of the depression and the loss of the farm. so this was a heavy blow. 

 

Enter my mom. Thirteen years old at the time, she worked three jobs - delivering newspapers before school, cleaning the local hotel after school, and another job on weekends. The hotel paid her in cash, so on the way home, she would stop at the grocer and get whatever was going to be on the table that evening for dinner. Their meals tended to be largely potatoes,I was told, because they were both cheap and filling.

When she graduated from high school in 1943, mom immediately moved to Bremerton and got a job with the Bremerton Navy Yard to help with the war effort.. As a kid, she was one of the few moms who worked outside the home, and she spent more than 35 years with Seattle First National Bank, rising to Assistant Vice President, quite an accomplishment for a woman in those early days of women in the work force. Since Seattle First National was also my first job, I remember her as a resource for branches near and far who wanted to know how to do things right.

 

These habits of hard work and industry were deeply ingrained throughout her life. My cousin used to say he would rather eat off my mom's floors than his own mom's plates. He said it in jest, of course, (his mom was a fine housekeeper), but it was pretty true nonetheless, and as a kid, I hated it. But mom, I've always been proud of you.

 

 

Family History Challenge - Day 2

 

 As a young mom, this woman was my inspiration! On those difficult days with my 3 kids, her story inspired me. My grandmother told me her story when I was newly married and it became ever more important as I had children of my own. 

 This lady is my great-great grandmother. The photo is her wedding picture. She was 32 years old with 5 living children (2 died before they were a year old - life was hard back then) when her husband died. A few months later, her neighbor, a widower with 9 children approached her about combining their households. They married and together had 7 more children. According to my grandmother, she raised three more children, although she didn’t say what their circumstances were or how they came into the household. I always figured, if this woman could raise 23 children, I could probably hang in there to raise my 3 kids.

It's Mother's Day!

Well, technically, Mother's Day falls in May, not August, so let me explain.  This year for Mother's Day, Wonderful Husband was away visiting my Beautiful Daughters, and came home Mother's Day afternoon.  For weeks the children had been telling me that Dad and the kiddos had a great gift planned and they were SO excited.  So when Wonderful Husband's plane arrived on Mother's Day afternoon, he took me to dinner and presented me with a card, inside which was my gift - the password for my very own 1 year membership to Ancestry.com..

 That evening, I signed on - and I was hooked.  I have been looking for my Great Grandfather Wheeler since 1975.  My Grandfather died when I was 5, and my Grandmother really couldn't remember very much about his father.  She told me what she knew, but it never got me very far.  Later, my dad told me that he had lived with his Grandfather, Martin Luther Wheeler, in Cody, WY when he was young.  In fact, he said, he was called "Garth" because having two "Martins" in the house was just too confusing.  I had tried an ancestry 2 week trial membership, and had a few successes, but GGF Wheeler was not to be found.

So, Mother's Day afternoon, I signed on to Ancestry.com, typed in "Martin Luther Wheeler" and THERE HE WAS!  Apparently my Great Grandmother Wheeler died when my Grandfather was about 2, and GGF Wheeler remarried - to a woman with 3 children!  One of them was kind enough to include him in their family.  But wait - there's more. 

Not only was he there, with all his vital statistics, but there was a photo of him with his second wife, Sarah.  You know, he looks a little like my dad.

Anyway, for about the next 6 weeks, I spent every available minute at the computer.  It was ridiculous!  Before Mother's Day, I had about 475 names, painstakingly gathered from microfilm, microfiche (whatever that was) and family records.  Over the next 6 weeks I gathered about 4500 ancestors.  Easy peasy!  Those little leaf thingys are so cool!  You can sign up for your 2 week trial membership here.

I finally realized that most good things are better in moderation (really, I knew that, but we all have to be reminded now and again).  Somehow, my comfortable chair wasn't so comfortable any more.  Maybe it was time to return to some of my other hobbies.

Which brings me to Mother's Day gift #2.  When Manda put Daddy on the plane, she sent him home with a second gift for me.  A charm square pack that I had told her that I liked.  Every day or two, while I have been sitting in that comfortable chair I mentioned, I would take it out and play with it.  I ruffled through the beautiful fabrics and imagined what I was going to do with it.  Yummy.  There is something so comforting about fabric and colors and ideas and imagining...

Last night, I was wandering around the net and traveled to Moda Bake Shop (not for the first time), where I found a beautiful recipe for a quilt, made out of the jelly roll of this very fabric.  I loved it.  Would it work with charm squares?  Yes, I think so.  So now, instead of charm squares, I have a pile of quilt squares. Soon to be a quilt, I hope.

So thank you family, for a wonderful Mother's Day - the kind that lasts awhile.  Very cool.