Sometimes, on a journey, you veer off the path you had chosen to take. Perhaps you saw a sign offering you a chance to see some great local sight. Maybe you just happened to look over and see something to the side of the road, and you wanted to check it out.
In one instance, my husband and I, while on our honeymoon trip, were enticed by a tape.
Though the Polaroid I took was slightly damaged, it still shows the “Sky Blue Journal” set of tapes that offered us insight into history and sites as we traveled through Minnesota. In the background, you can see one of those sites. You can also see our travelling companion, Blue. That’s another story. 😉
The tape happened to mention there was a statue of the Jolly Green Giant just a few miles away from where we were travelling. Of course, I wanted to see it. So, we went, and sure enough, there he was! You almost expected to hear the “Ho, ho, ho!” from the massive, 55 foot tall guy. We didn’t stay long, but we got pictures and enjoyed a quick break from our cross-country trip.
Lately, with my research, I’ve felt pretty much the same way. I try to focus in on one person, but I might catch a glimpse of something that leads me off my path.
For instance, I started researching my great-grandmother, Bessie Mae Layne Newell Massey. I was hoping to find some additional records about Herbert Newell, her first husband and my great-grandfather. Instead, I wound up getting more information about George Massey, her second husband. While interesting, it was not what I was looking for.
I did find one item today on one of these side trips that gave me some additional information on my grandmother’s family. I was looking for information on another great-grandfather, Manford Lawson, and came upon a death certificate for one of his sons:
You can see that James died of whooping-cough. This is just about the time that the whooping-cough vaccine was developed. Too bad it didn’t save him.
James was another of the family’s “One Hit Wonders”. He made his one and only appearance in 1920 on the US Census.
James in the 1920 Census.
Sometimes, being sidetracked can be fun, but at other times, it can be frustrating. I’ve had a particular post in mind, and it just seems like every time I start the research for it, I find myself on tangents. Even fruitful moments like finding the death record for James don’t make up for the fact that, right now, I should be finding other records for other family members.
Have you ever been sidetracked like this? If so, how do you break away from the side trips and get back to your genealogical path?
Does anyone else remember the television show “In Search of…”? I used to love watching it. My Dad turned me onto it at first. It was in the late 70’s and early 80’s; about the time I was in high school. The show was hosted by Leonard Nimoy, and was done documentary style.
The focus of the show was to explain mysteries and phenomena. Some shows dealt with natural occurences like tornadoes. Others delved into things like ESP or UFOs. Several shows dealt with mysteries of historical significance as well, like Jack the Ripper, the lost colony of Roanoke, Virginia, or even Dracula (Vlad the Impaler, but of course, they did touch upon the vampire as well).
“In Search of…” never claimed to have the correct answer. It gave the facts, provided some possibilities, but ultimately, it left it up to the viewer to make up their minds as to what the explanation really was.
In going through my family history, I have a few mysteries. One that keeps drawing my attention is a child without a name. So today on my genealogical journey, I’m going ‘In Search of…’ Baby Taylor.
I’ve actually mentioned this baby before. I first discovered information about this child on the 1900 US Census when tracing my great-grandparents’ travels from their native West Virginia.
My Grandfather and His Family
My great-grandmother has eight living children, but had nine children in total. The ninth child, Baby Taylor, is our mystery. When and where was the baby born? Was it a boy or a girl? How long did the child live? When and where did it die?
Assuming the child was not born out-of-wedlock, the date of birth would be some time after my great-grandparents were married. My great-grandfather’s obituary stated:
He was married on March 15, 1883 to miss Georgia Chrisman and to this union nine children were born….
I was able to confirm the date of the marriage using data from a vital records search at the West Virgina Division of Culture and History site (West Virginia has been probably one of the easiest places I’ve found to search for such information, and if you have family members that are from West Virginia, I would recommend searching there).
The date of the 1900 US Census was the 29th of June. So, I was looking at a window of birth somewhere between March 15, 1883 and June 29, 1900 (about a 17 year window).
Looking further into my great-grandfather’s obituary, it provided me with more information:
He moved with his family to Nebraska in 1884 and for nine years resided in that state. In 1893, he moved to Gallatin, Mo., where he made his home for sixteen years, moving from there to Arkansas, where he lived for three years.
So, unless born on the move from West Virginia to Nebraska in some state between those places, the baby would have been born in West Virginia, Nebraska, or Missouri. Those were the three states the family lived in within that 17 year window.
The birth months and years on the census of the 8 children known are:
Millard D. – October 1885
Oscar R. – March 1887
Boyd – July 1888
Lucy D. – April 1891
Ethel – November 1892
Anna M. – February 1894
Hazel – May 1896
Floyd R. – April 1900
I decided to look at the gaps between events:
From Marriage until birth of Millard D. – 31 months
Between Millard D. and Oscar R. – 17 months
Between Oscar R. and Boyd – 16 months
Between Boyd and Lucy D. – 33 months
Between Lucy D. and Ethel – 19 months
Between Ethel and Anna M. – 15 months
Between Anna M. and Hazel – 27 months
Between Hazel and Floyd R. – 47 months
I excluded any gap that would be too small for another baby to be born (assuming a normal term of 9 months for each baby, that would mean less than 18 months).
So, that left me with the following possibilities for Baby Taylor’s birthday (assuming the baby was not a twin of a sibling):
Between March 1883 and January 1885
Between April 1889 and July 1890
Between January 1892 and February 1892
Between November 1894 and August 1895
Between February 1897 and July 1899
The third one I found highly unlikely. My great-grandmother would have been almost constantly pregnant!
One day on familysearch.org, I was searching for more information on my great-grandparents, and I got a suggestion for an ancestral file. I went to look at it, and it showed the names of both my great-grandparents, and there were correct dates, including the date of their marriage. Underneath that it said “Show Children (9)”.
I figured that perhaps when I clicked on it, I would get eight names and then some “?” type entry for Baby Taylor. Instead, I got a name:
name:
Amy C TALOR
gender:
Female
birth:
15 Dec 1883
,, WV
death:
11 Aug 1885
afn:
6WK2-VK
AFN stands for Ancestral File Number, and is a unique indicator for that file.
Whoa! Not only a name, but a birth date and a death date too! The birth date and place listed was plausible; it was exactly nine months after my great-grandparents were married (that must have been some wedding night)!
But, before getting too excited, I wanted to check this out. Could I find the records that matched the information? Was Amy C. Talor (not sure why the different spelling) truly Baby Taylor?
So, back I went to my favorite vital research page in West Virginia, typed in Amy C. Taylor (figuring the Talor was a misspelling), Lewis County (last residence place of my great-grandparents), 1883, female, and hit search. I got back…nothing.
I started playing around with it. I changed the search to All Counties. Nothing. I changed the spelling to Talor. Nothing. I changed it back and just tried Amy. Still nothing.
Finally, out of frustration, I decided just to search just the last name. Show me all female Taylor babies born in West Virginia in 1883. That time, I got a list. Two results on the list of 25 caught my eye:
My great-grandparents were also born in Upshur county, and the date was two days off from the date given on the AFN record. While record 7 said Annie C. instead of Amy C., it was the same initials, and Lewis county was a possibility as well.
The unnamed Taylor girl did not turn out to be the right one. While the father’s name was listed as Wm., the mother was Idella M. and not Georgianna. Would I fare any better with Annie? See what you think:
The father’s name is hard to read here. It looks like a W and another letter. On the opposite page is listed the mother’s name, and the name of the person who reported the birth. The mother’s name is listed as “Georgie”. I wondered…would someone have heard the name Georgianna and thought it was two names instead of one (Georgie Anna)? I looked over to the name of the person that reported the birth. It happened to be the father, and he was listed as W. H. Taylor. The birth date was December 15th, an exact match to the record for Amy C.!
I thought of what that would mean that my great-grandparents had a child in 1883. They would have traveled miles with the baby in a wagon across several states to reach Nebraska. Where was she when she first started to crawl? In which state would she have taken her first steps? How would she have been kept occupied while her father worked on building their home?
Of course, I thought too about the death date that was listed. Annie would not have been quite two before she died. What happened? A sickness? An accident? Where would I find confirmation of the death date and would that provide other information?
Unfortunately, answers to those questions have yet to be answered. I have yet to confirm the death date, but I’m working on trying to reach the submitter of the AFN to see if I can get more details. I’m still looking for any other data on the family. I was hoping the 1885 Nebraska State Census would be helpful, but it hasn’t. I haven’t found any record of my family in it, even though I know they were there for Millard D.’s birth in 1885. They were supposed to have moved to Nebraska a year before that. Had something delayed them on the journey?
If I find out more information, I’ll share it when we go ‘In Search of…’ Baby Taylor Annie C. Taylor.
In music, a “one hit wonder” is when a singer or musical group has one chart-topping song. They have one big hit and that’s it. However, some of those single hits for one group have gone on to be hits for others. Still more of them have gone on to be featured in countless collections of hits from their era, or have been immortalized in movie soundtracks.
I personally didn’t know who Bobby Day was, but say the name of his one hit wonder “Rockin’ Robin” and I not only think of the Jackson 5, I also think of one particular hand clapping game we used to play to this tune; the first verse was pretty much the same as the original, but the second was a bit different. I don’t recall the original lyrics being “Your Daddy’s in the back yard, shootin’ them dice/your Mama’s in the kitchen, cookin’ that rice.” And, I didn’t know that before a group called the Crew Cuts did the song “Sh-boom” (aka “Life Could Be a Dream”) that it was a one hit wonder for a group called The Chords. If you’ve seen Pixar’s movie Cars, then you heard this song playing as the cars were cruising the neon lit streets.
There are plenty of other examples in music of course. However, the “one hit wonders” that I am referring to in this case are those in our genealogy. They are children in our families that show up on a single census. Their presence is a one time occurrence for a single decade’s list, and they are never seen again.
When going through the 1940 US Census, I was looking for a potential one hit wonder in my own family. When I started looking into my mother’s side of the family tree, I had mentioned the tragic circumstances of her older sister’s death. Because of when she was born, I knew that 1940 would be the only census on which she would appear. The question remained though: would she be on it at all?
The family lore varied a lot on when she had actually died. Some made it sound like she was just a baby or toddler. My gut feeling though was that she would have been older. I made that conclusion based on the story. If she was trying to go after a bottle of nail polish on a fireplace mantle, I felt she would need to be at least three or four to attempt to climb or reach up to the mantle.
I knew where the family should be at this point, because I was able to find birth records for both the sister and my mother in the same location. Letcher County, Kentucky is where I started my search.
The hard part was that I didn’t know exactly in what section of Letcher County to start. I used the 1940 Census Enumeration District Finder created by Stephen P. Morse, PhD & Joel D. Weintraub, PhD to show me all the districts for the county. I then looked at the descriptions. From the 1930 Census, I knew that my grandfather’s family had lived in Magisterial District 1, which had four possible enumerations districts that made it up. I decided I’d have to search page by page.
In enumeration district (ED) 67-1, I saw the name ‘Whitaker’ a few times, but almost all the names were unfamiliar. One name I tucked away for a future date to research because I thought it might be a son of Vetter Whittaker, whose name helped me link up several spelling variations on multiple censuses. So, not finding any of my family in that district, I went on to ED 67-2.
I was eleven pages in and I almost missed it. It wasn’t my mother’s sister, but it led me to believe I was on the right track. It also thoroughly convinced me that somehow, the census takers had decided to make things difficult for me because once again, they were mixing things up on me again.
For the fourth time, they have spelled my great-grandmother’s name wrong! And, they got my great-grandfather’s wrong as well!
The reason I almost didn’t catch this was because both of my great-grandparents’ names are incorrect. Manford is listed as Langford, and Thenie is listed as Dina!
So, you might ask, how do I know this is really my family? It’s because of the twins. However, once again, we have a gender-bending census taker, because Rolie and Trolie Lawson were actually identical twin boys! Rolie and Trolie (or as I knew them, Uncle Roll and Uncle Troll) were not just names to me. I knew them both growing up, and they were both down to earth with great senses of humor.
In finding my great-grandparents and two of my grand-uncles, I figured I was starting to get nearer to finding the family. In fact, on the next page, I found another possible relative. The name was listed as Esta, but I think it might be Delbert Estes, another grand-uncle.
After that, page after page went by without seeing another familiar name. Then, turning to my 26th page to review, I found what I was looking for (and more):
The first family listed is my great-grandmother with her second husband, and two of my grandfather’s half-siblings (I think that the last name is Juanita, which means we once again have a census taker that is a sex change artist). You can see that the census taker probably missed filling in one field, and he was entering things in the wrong spots. He had to go in and make corrections, and unfortunately, his correction for Juanita made her a boy.
The final line contains the name of my one hit wonder: Anna (Mae) Newell. As you can see, she is the only child at the moment. Not for long though. You see, my grandmother was a few months pregnant by this time, and before the year was out, she would be giving birth to my Mom.
My grandfather used to tell us about how when Grandma was pregnant with Mom, she would chew ice all the time. He would say, “All day long she would just be crunchin’ on that ice. Crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch! Sounded like a hog chewin’ on corn!” I guess she got over it eventually; I was told when she had one of my aunts, it was peaches that she craved.
I was glad to see Anna Mae on the census. I had already found her birth record. Seeing another record for her made her seem more real to me. She had lived. She would have been about 18 months old at the time of the census, so she would have been walking and talking. But, I knew at the same time, this young girl would in a few years die tragically. It was a bittersweet discovery, but one that I feel helped me make a deeper connection to the aunt I never knew.
I wonder if any of you have any one hit wonders in your family?
It’s been years since this picture was taken, but I’m happy to say that Bill and I are still together, and still very much in love.
Even though we had a daytime wedding, our wedding took place under the stars. The building behind us is the Longway Planetarium in Flint, Michigan. We said our vows under the dome, beneath the stars projected above us.
It was my second marriage; Bill’s first. So, he was the one that got to wear white. 😉 One of my Aunts made my dress, which is white satin overlayed with royal blue lace. Royal blue is my favorite color.
Our friends Carla and Brenda were the Maid and Matron of Honor. Our friend Derek was Bill’s Best Man, and my Brother Tim and his son Timmy were groomsmen/ushers. Tiffany, my niece, was our flower girl. My Dad (kind of out of sight in this picture) was able to finally walk his daughter down the aisle (the first time, I eloped).
As you can see, the star theme carried through into our decorations. Tiffany carried a star wand rather than a basket of flowers. The bridemaids’ dresses had a fabric than kind of reminded me of the Milky Way.
My grandparents, my brother and his wife and family, most of my cousins from my Mom’s side, and some of their children.
Bill, his Aunt, two of his cousins and their families.
Unfortunately, Bill’s Mom and Dad weren’t able to make it out from Oregon to our wedding, but one of his cousins came with his family from Arizona. The rest of his family came up from Ohio. Much of my family was already in Michigan, but I did have one Aunt and Uncle and a cousin that came in from the East Coast.
We spent a weekend up in Harrison Michigan at a bed and breakfast.
One corner of our room at the Carriage House Inn.
After that, it was time to finish packing, as the rest of our honeymoon was spent travelling cross country in a Ryder truck, bringing all my stuff from Michigan out to California. We both said if you can survive a week together in a Ryder truck, you can survive anything. 😛
We did have one companion on our trip West. My last day of work, I took one of the M&M dispensers with me. Blue, the M&M guy, became our travelling buddy, and Blue wrote back to my former co-workers about his exploits on the road. We stopped at St. Julian’s winery in Paw Paw, Michigan, before heading down to Berwyn, Illinois, where a branch of the bank I had worked for was located. From there we continued our trek West, and got to see many interesting sights with Blue.
This Polaroid shows some decay, but you can still see Blue on the dashboard of the Ryder truck with the statue of the Jolly Green Giant in the background.
Bill and Blue posing in front of Mount Rushmore.
I believe that is Old Faithful in the background. We are at Yellowstone Park.
One last thing I’d like to share with you. We didn’t write our own vows, but I did write a poem that we both recited as we exchanged rings.
I know a lot of us are excited about the 1940 US Census being available for the first time today. I’m wondering what your plans are, and who you plan on looking for first?
Unfortunately, I’ll need to wait another ten years before I’ll be able to see my parents on the census. However, I still look forward to seeing my aunts and uncles on my Dad’s side of the family. And, on Mom’s side, I look forward to seeing her older sister make her only census appearance. I mentioned her in February; the little girl who died tragically.
Only “Poppa”, my Aunt Jeanette’s father, was my only living great-grandparent on my Dad’s side, but my great-grandparents on Mom’s side (with one exception) should all be alive. And, I was interested to find out more about their children and where they were in 1940.
I asked Bill who he would like to find out about first on his side of the family, and he said if possible, he’d like to find out more about his great-grandparents. We knew his great-grandmother Sabados would still be alive. We also knew his great-grandfather Schreckengost would be alive. However, we had no idea about when his mother’s maternal grandparents had died, and we had so far come up empty on the 1930 census, so they might be long dead, or we just hadn’t found the right connection to them yet.
One of the things I’m also excited to do tomorrow is that I have volunteered to help index the census records. I’m looking forward to it. It’s a way of giving back to the genealogical community, a community that has been so great in answering questions and giving advice to help further my adventure. I’m setting a goal to transcribe 1,000 names for the month of April. That’s about one full census sheet a day. I know it’s probably just a drop in the bucket, but together with all the others that will be volunteering, it will help in getting the information out there to all.
So, I wish you all the best in your searches. Good hunting!
I remember very well watching both Roots and Roots: The Next Generations when I was in my teens. I think in some ways, watching the story of Alex Haley’s ancestry unfold planted some of the first seeds for my own interest in family history. I just watched the ending of the sequel to make sure I had the quote above correct, and got to again experience the elation expressed by James Earl Jones as Alex Haley when he discovered that he had indeed found the people from which his ancestor, Kunta Kinte had been taken from. Even more touching though, was the scene where Haley was about to leave when a young man came running up. It turned out that this man was a long-lost cousin of his, and the two men embraced as Haley broke down, sobbing with the overwhelming emotions he must have felt.
This past year, our only niece graduated from high school in Michigan. Unfortunately, our budget didn’t allow the two of us to be at her graduation or open house. However, we were able to afford a plane ticket so she could visit her aunt and uncle in California. She came to visit us in August, about a month before she started college.
The first weekend she was here, Bill came back from the mailbox and handed me a large, thick, manila envelope. I took one look at the return address, and I got excited.
The minute I saw this, I knew exactly what it contained. My uncle's military records!
I contained my excitement enough to open the envelope without ripping the contents. Though I wanted to go through the documents in more detail at some point, my goal the first time through was to skim through to see if I could find any mention of my Aunt Bunny.
So, through the pages I went, as fast as I could go without missing any mention of a name. Place names were popping up on every page. Street names were familiar; Knickerbocker Avenue, Genesee Avenue, and Wheeler Drive were all places I knew the family had lived at one time or another. Then came places that my Uncle was stationed like Korea, Casablanca, Texas, Michigan, and others.
It wasn’t until almost the very last pages in the packet that I found what I was looking for. On the page, the typing was very faint, so it was hard to read. “7 Jan 52: Amn (Airman) married Miss Ethel….”
Ethel? Was Aunt Bunny’s real name Ethel? There was one way to find out. I went in and changed the name on my records at Ancestry.com and I got a new leaf!
One of the things I was pointed to were some family trees, and a few of them had a picture attached to their record of Ethel. It was a picture that I had never posted on Ancestry.com, but it excited me even more when I saw it.
That's right! It was the same picture of Bunny and her children that my Dad had given me!
I was certain that whoever had this picture was a member of the family somehow. I just didn’t know who. It could be one of my cousins, or it could be another relative of my Aunt. I was hoping that whoever it was would be able to help me find Aunt Bunny and my cousins.
So, to the two people who I saw with the picture, I sent an email. Basically I said that I had come across the name in my Uncle’s separation paperwork, that I had seen the picture and it matched one my father had given to me, and asked how they might be related and that I was trying to find out if my Aunt and cousins were still living, and if so, would there be a way to get in touch with them by email or phone. I did not include any names in my email at the time.
The first person I sent the message to didn’t respond for a few days, and while they were helpful, they were not a relative of mine (it was a relative from Bunny’s side of the family though). The second person I sent the message to was the first to respond. The reply was brief, but thrilling:
Hi Pam,
Bunny was my mother. Who was your uncle?
I had my own little Alex Haley moment when I read that. I found you! Cousin! I found you! I immediately wrote back, this time filling in the details so that she knew exactly who I was talking about. I eventually was given contact information for all my cousins. I also found out that the two oldest actually were Bunny’s children from a previous marriage, so they are not actually blood relatives, though I still consider them to be my cousins.
Unfortunately, I found out my Aunt Bunny passed away a few years ago. It was the one sad thing amid this joyous moment.
The greatest thing though was that while my niece was still with us, we were able to talk on the phone with one of my cousins. He actually had been the one that, several years before had called around to find my Dad, and they both unfortunately lost touch with each other after that brief re-connection. I was able to put them back in touch with each other, and my cousin visited Michigan last fall to spend time with my Dad. My brother and his family also got to meet him. I am hoping that I will get to meet him and my other cousins soon.
So, I had met the challenge my Dad had originally set for me; it took just over a year to do it. By tracing our roots, I had just discovered a branch on our tree that had been hidden from view. While that portion of the journey was over, my adventuring in ancestry was just getting started!
When my father sent me several documents related to our family history, he sent me a few photographs too. Two of these photographs made me think back, remembering times from my past.
This was my Dad’s cousin Harold, and his wife Grace. I only had the opportunity to see him a couple of times, but I remember him being a kind man, and he had a bit of a sense of humor. His wife was nice, and a wonderful hostess when we visited their home in Lubbock, Texas when I was in my teens. I still remember having the best hamburger of my life down there. It was really more of a steak burger, because they used ground sirloin. Yummy!
Harold had served in the military, and had been a prisoner of war. Every time I see “Bridge on the River Kwai” I think of Harold because I was told that he worked on it while in captivity.
The next picture was older; the memories that came to me with it were not of the young girls in the photo, but of some of the women I knew in it.
The people in this picture were misidentified in this picture a couple of times by my Dad. He originally told me that this was a picture of my great-grandmother and three of her four girls. He later identified it correctly as the four sisters. However, he had also identified the youngest (on the left) as my grandmother, but in reality, she was not the youngest; the girl on the left was actually her sister, Jessie Rae. My grandmother would then be on the right. The oldest girl would be Donna, who was Harold’s mother. The girl seated would be Jeanette.
Sadly, I never knew two of the people in the photograph. Aunt Donna had died long before we were able to visit Texas as a family, and my grandmother died when I was just a baby. I do remember Aunt Rae a little better. We had several occasions where we would attend family gatherings together. My memories of her though are not very distinct; bits and pieces of a Thanksgiving dinner or some other holiday gathering, but most of them relate more to the food or to the other children than they do to Aunt Rae.
With Aunt Jeanette though, the memories are quite vivid. I spent so many days with her. While she always seemed old to me, when I was a child I can remember going so many places with her. She would often take me with her when she would do to visit with Aunt Rae or other family members that were down in the Detroit suburbs. I would often stay the night at her house, and I would be there on occasion when out-of-town visitors came by. I believe the first time I met Harold was one of those times; I met his brother Glenn on another occasion when I was at Aunt Jeanette’s.
The final picture had no memories associated with it. It was a picture of family members I had never met before: My Aunt Bunny and her children.
I knew they were out there, somewhere. I was hoping that I would soon get the next clue to help solve the mystery of where they were. Little did I know that this picture would be a key clue to that solution.
At times, on a journey, you come across something unexpected, a discovery that lends a bit of excitement to your adventure. When Bill and I were last in Michigan several years ago, we visited Mackinac Island, a place I hadn’t been to since I was a kid. When I had been there with my family all those years ago, we had ridden bicycles around the perimeter of the island. Bill and I walked some of the paths farther in, and saw many wonderful wooded landscapes, and , a fort that I had never seen before.
Flags being raised at Fort Mackinac
Fort Mackinac was a well-known fort, and we got there early enough to see these Girl Scouts raise the flags that day. The fort we discovered though was not nearly as well fortified.
Bill in the doorway into Fort George/Fort Holmes
The fort was not much more than raised dirt walls, but according to the sign nearby it “was the bulwark of British defenses in 1814 when the American attack was repulsed.” I could see why. It was at the highest point on the island, and looked straight down on Fort Mackinac.
Looking down from our newly discovered fort, we could see the flags that we had watched the scouts raise a few hours before.
Not all discoveries come in the form of forts or buildings though. With genealogy, discovery often takes the form of documents; various records and photographs.
One such genealogical discovery I made was in the documents my father had sent me. One in particular I called “genealogy gold”. It was the obituary of my paternal great-grandfather, William H. Taylor.
William Henry Taylor Obituary
OLD RESIDENT OF THE CITY BURIED LAST FRIDAY
William H. Taylor, age 75 years, 3 months, and five days, who died March 15th, at his home here, was buried in Park Cemetry last Friday afternoon, following religious services which were conducted at the Methodist Church by the Pastor, the Rev. W. J. Velvick.
Mr. Taylor was born on Nov. 1o, 1857 in Upshur County, West Virginia, the son of John and Eliza Taylor. He moved with his family to Nebraska in 1884 and for nine years resided in that state. In 1893, he moved to Gallatin, Mo., where he made his home for sixteen years, moving from there to Arkansas, where he lived for three years. In 1913, he moved with his family to Malden and opened a furniture store having operated that business up until he was stricken with paralysi two years age. Mr. Taylor suffered his first paralytic stroke while serving on the election in1931, and had been unable to continue his business after that time.
He was married on March 15, 1883 to miss Georgia Chrisman and to this union nine children were born, three of these having preceded their father in death. Mr. Taylor is surviced by his wife and six children, these being: Roy Taylor of Carbondale, Ill.; Mrs. Dell Lukeheart, Ceadar grove, Iowa; Mrs. Ethel Littell, Mounds, Ill.; Mrs. Maud Hester of Malden;Mrs. Hazel Nobel of Parma; and Ralph Taylor of Flint, Michigan.
On the date of his death, Mr. and Mrs. Taylor, were celebrating their golden wedding anniversary, having been married for fifty years.
(handwritten) 2 of the songs (Some Day We’ll Know, Abide With Me)
Wow! I was blown away! Basically this one document confirmed every bit of census data that I had already found, and filled in a few details as well. Within about a year of marrying my great-grandmother, they had moved to Nebraska, where census data showed that five of their children were born: Millard Dee (1885), Roy Oscar (1887), Boyd (1888), Lucy Dell (1891), and Ethel (1892). In 1893, the family moved to Gallatin, Missouri in Daviess County and lived there for sixteen years, enough time for three other children to be born: Anna Maud (1894), Hazel (1896), and Floyd Ralph, my grandfather (1900).
My Grandfather and His Family
Now looking at the fact that 9 children were born and only 8 were living, I knew that child number nine could have been born in West Virginia prior to the first move, in Nebraska, in Missouri, or possibly somewhere along the road. My best guesses were that, barring the possibility of a twin, it would be a child older than Millard, a child born in the gap between Boyd and Lucy Dell, or in the gap between Hazel and my grandfather.
They would live there until about 1909, when they moved to Arkansas, just in time to be there for the 1910 census.
Now there was no question; my family had indeed lived in Arkansas!
With the information from the obituary, I was now able to figure out which of the children were still living and which had died. Ethel, Maud, Hazel and my grandfather were still living with their parents. Roy and Dell were listed in the obituary. Therefore, Millard and Boyd had died. I was able to confirm this. I found a picture of their grave marker at findagrave.com. Boyd died in 1905; Millard in 1907. They were buried in Gallatin, Missouri.
Finally, my great-grandparents didn’t stay in Arkansas long; they moved to Malden in 1913, which is where they lived out their lives. My great-grandfather ran a furniture store until he had a stroke in 1931 when he was serving on the election, and he died in 1933 on the day of his golden wedding anniversary. It seems like the Ides of March was both a good and a bad day in his life.
I am not sure why this obituary was typed rather than a newspaper clipping like the one I was given for my great-grandmother. Perhaps the copy was in a very deteriorated condition, and the person who typed it wanted to retain the information, even if it wasn’t in its original form. Perhaps they copied it from a clipping that belonged to another member of the family. This likely was done before the age of the Xerox machine. It could have also been typed by one member of the family and mailed to another farther away.
The one piece of information that is on this typed copy though is one that you would not find in the newspaper. That is the handwritten note that indicates two of the songs played or sung at the funeral. Whoever wrote that down was either at the funeral or had spoken to someone who had been in attendance.
It’s always great to discover a new piece of information. It’s greater still when a piece of information confirms the data you have.
I was fortunate to know most of my grandparents. On my father’s side, I did not get to know his mother; she died when I was just a baby. His father remarried, and it was his second wife that I knew as my Grandma. Once he died though, she moved away to be closer to her children from a previous marriage, and our family didn’t keep in touch with them. On my mother’s side, I was very fortunate to have both grandparents alive to see many milestones in my life. They were able to see me graduate from high school and later from college. While they didn’t get to see me marry the first time (since I eloped), they did get to be there to see me get married to my present husband. My grandfather died later that year. My grandmother, now in her 90’s, is still with us.
I only ever met one of my great-grandparents. My grandmother’s mother, Thenie F. Whittaker Lawson, had come to Michigan to stay with the family for a time. I was about eight or nine, and somehow, she intimidated, even scared me a little! She seemed much sterner than the smiling image of her daughter above, and I don’t remember her talking much. When she did talk, I don’t remember understanding her much. She mumbled and muttered much of the time. She was in her 80’s at the time, and was probably the oldest person I had ever seen at that time.
I remember the day that she died. My Mom and Grandma had gone with her to the store (Yankees, I believe, but it might have been about the time they were taken over by Zodys). I didn’t go into the store with them; I stayed out in the car (that was back in the days when people left their kids out in the car without fear of them being abducted or overheating). What I remembered was the ambulance coming, sirens going off and lights flashing. I don’t remember much after that other than going home. I didn’t know what had happened to my great-grandmother until later. She had a heart attack while in the store.
In trying to go back into Thenie’s history, I thought it would be easy. After all, Thenie is a rather unusual name. However, I didn’t realize how many twists and turns I would take with the name Whittaker! It didn’t take me long to realize that this again, might be a journey that would not be the straightforward path I had thought it to be.
For example, here are some of the variations of Whittaker that I found on my initial searches:
Whittaker
Whitaker
Whiteaker
Whitacre
And, as to Thenie being helpful because of it being unusual? I failed to take into account how census takers can mangle a name. And, in this case, I feel they did more than just that.
I had to make some educated guesses with these records, and I believe they all are showing the same family group. However, there is still a possibility that I could be wrong. Judge for yourself.
This is the one census that I know is correct for my family. Notice though that my great-grandmother is listed as Thenia instead of Thenie.
If you think that’s bad, let’s go back to 1910.
Now, Whittaker has become Whiteaker, and Thenie is now Othena? What gives?
Now, here’s also where family lore and census data start to butt heads. My great-grandmother did have a twin whose name was Mary. However, family lore stated she died as an infant. Yet, here she is, almost an adult! The lone son listed here is named Vetery. My great-grandmother had a brother named Vetter.
When I saw my great-grandmother listed here as Othena, somewhere in the back of my mind I could hear someone, in a voice very much like my grandmother’s saying to the census taker, “Now let’s see, we have a Sarah, a Mary, and a Thenie….”
When you get to 1900 though, things really start to get wonky:
OK, what is wrong with this picture?
OK, now the family has their last name listed as Whitacre. Thenie has now changed into Venie. The twin Mary is still there, and the birthdate is shown as May 1891 (which is the month and year of my great-grandmother’s birth). However, there is a big difference in ages between the Rebecah here and the Rebecca of 10 years later. I do notice though that the 1900’s Rebecah has 9 children of which 5 are living. The 1910 Rebecca has 10 children of which 5 still live.
The big problem I had here was the mystery of the youngest child. ‘Vetery’ who was listed as being about four years younger than the twins (and was listed as a son), had disappeared! In his place was a daughter named “Legie”, born in June of 1896 (which is, coincidentally, when my relative Vetter was born).
Talk about a roller coaster ride! I felt like I was zigging and zagging all over the place with these records. Just when I thought I would find something that would tie everything up neatly, a wild curve sent me whirling into a spin!
Ancestry.com has the option of saving items you aren’t sure tie into your family tree to a ‘Shoebox’ so that you can review them at a later time. I thought for sure that the 1900 and 1910 US Census records I had found would be in my Shoebox for a long time. Then, one day, I decided to do a search on Vetter Whittaker trying to see if I could find out more about him, and I stumbled across this record that I think ties it all together:
Lige (or Leige) Vetter Whittaker – now it was all starting to make sense!
So, Vetter’s first name was Leige. To me, this tied Vetter into the Legie that was listed in 1900. Their birth dates were the same month and year. They had somehow entered the gender wrong! Could it have been that the census taker wasn’t paying attention and copied information from the previous line. Had he made an assumption, thinking that Legie sounded like a girl’s name? I know that I’ve seen pictures of very young children, both boys and girls being dressed very much alike. If this boy got any hand-me-downs, they likely came from his sisters. Could the census taker have put down ‘daughter’ without asking anyone what the gender of the child actually was?
It was about this same time that in my journeys out in cyberspace that I came across the website www.findagrave.com. Find A Grave has contributors around the world that update, maintain, and add to the list of over 75 million grave sites. Searching the records is very easy, and you can sometimes find a great deal of information. Vetter was one of the first people who I searched for. Not only did I find him listed, but someone had actually taken pictures of his grave marker! Even more exciting was the fact that a piece on the head stone contained a picture of Vetter and his wife!
Vetter and his wife Arizonia. This is a close up of the picture medallion on their grave marker.
Eventually, I ran out of steam on this line as well, and so, I turned away from looking into my side of the family tree entirely and began to journey into my husband’s ancestral past.
For a time, my father’s family history had become blocked; I was finding no avenue down which I could make any progress. Two paths had merged when my parents married me and had children though. I decided to turn aside for a time from the path of my father’s historical lineage and begin to trace the path that was my mother’s family line.
My mother, sad to say, would not be able to share in this journey as my father has been able to do with the information I have gathered about his family. She passed away a few years ago. However, because the family had gathered together some of the history, I had more of a head start on this portion of my journey.
One of the things that intrigued me about Mom’s side of the family was the fact that, up until I had received a copy of this family history, I had always thought she was the first-born child. But, she wasn’t! She had, in fact been the second born; she had an older sister.
Family lore has a rather sad story about what happened to this little girl. She had been climbing up to get an item (nail polish, as I was told) that was on the mantle of the fireplace. In climbing, she had slipped somehow, fell into the fireplace, and was burned. She died.
I wondered about this little girl. It surprised me to find that while the family knew her name, they did not have anything to give me about her birth and death information. I wasn’t sure why this was. Perhaps part of it was due to the fact that my grandparents lost several personal items when they had a fire at their home in Tennessee. Up in flames had gone all their memories; photographs and home movies gone with no hope of recovery (the technologies that allow for some items like this to be recovered digitally did not exist when this occurred). The family had done what they could to restore some of these memories. Taking from their own family photographs, they were able to compile some family pictures for them, but none of them had a picture of the oldest child of my grandparents.
It didn’t take too long to find a birth record for her, however. Through Ancestry.com, I was able to find my mother’s birth record, and looking just a few years farther back, I was able to find her older sister’s. The death record was more elusive. I wasn’t able to locate any record of her death. At this point I wasn’t sure about when she died or even where she died. Because the story indicated she had climbed up to reach something, I figured she would be older than a toddler. My mother’s next oldest sister, three years younger than my Mom, had no recollection of her sister, therefore, my working theory was that she had died no later than when my Aunt had been two or three. As to the where, would she have died in Kentucky, where she was born? Could the family have moved by then? Eventually, my grandparents had moved from Kentucky to Michigan. Could my mother’s older sister have died in one of those places, or somewhere in between?
My journey down this path also had another mystery I encountered along the way. One of my great-grandfathers also did not have any recorded history of his death that I could find. My maternal grandfather’s father supposedly had died a few years after my grandfather was born. As to when that happened or where, the family had no clue. I had another challenge to overcome, and another potential road block loomed before me.
I’ve found on this journey of mine that the path is rarely smooth, and there are all sorts of bumps and twists and turns along the way. As I was to find when I started into my maternal grandmother’s side of the family, those twists and turns were going to make the going a little more treacherous. I was going to need to watch my step, or I might make a mistake that could set me off down the wrong path.
