Memorial Day Memories

Tags

cemetery, Flint, Flint Memorial Park, genealogy, McCombs, Memorial Day, memory, Michigan, Taylor

While I don’t remember doing it every year, I can remember many a Memorial Day visiting the graves of my paternal grandparents.  On some occasions, I went with my Aunt Georgia, and I can remember her showing me how to use a knife to cut away some of the grass that was starting to encroach upon the edges of the headstones.  While I worked on my grandparent’s stone, I believe she worked on that of my Uncle Orvall, her first husband.  We also cleaned around the stone of “Poppa”, my great-grandfather (and my Aunt’s grandfather), Joseph Jeremiah McCombs.  I can remember being shown how to bring up the urn that was a part of my grandparents’ headstone, so we could place the flowers we had brought.

I can remember visiting with my Mother as well.  The area in Flint Memorial Park where my grandparents were buried was near to the area set aside to bury children.  By this time I knew I had a younger brother, Michael, that had died only a few days after being born.  I had wondered where he was buried, and I think I asked my mother that day.  I thought she and I would be walking over to where the children were buried, but I learned that day that Michael was buried at my grandmother’s feet.  No headstone marked the place where he lay.

The last time I visited Flint Memorial Park on Memorial Day, I was alone.  I was in college by that time.  I did the work by myself, cleaning around each headstone.  I think I had picked some early lilacs and had brought them with me (lilacs usually didn’t start coming in on our bushes until June).  I pulled up the urn and placed the flowers and stood there a moment, reflecting on the past before getting back in my car.  I went out that afternoon, not to a picnic or a barbecue, but to go visit my Aunt Georgia.  I would tell her of my visit that day, and listen to her tell me her memories of my father, my uncles, and my grandparents.

 

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Happy Anniversary!

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adventure, family, Flint, journey, marriage, Sabados, Taylor, wedding

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.

On the Bus

Tags

bus, Flint, journey, mass transit, Michigan, road, travel

I’m taking a brief break from my ancestors’ pasts to talk about my own for a moment.  I’m sorry that I am not posting as often as I planned to when I initially began this blog.  In the past few weeks our car bit the dust.  The transmission gave out, and the estimated costs were more than the value of the car.

Thankfully, we don’t live far from the bus lines, and so, for the past few weeks, the bus has become our source of transportation to and from work, with an occasional car pool trip here and there.  While it allows to get where we need to go, what had been a fifteen minute trip by car has become a two-hour trek each way by bus.  It cuts into time for other things in the day, including writing.

This is not my first venture into the world of mass transportation.  While most people really can’t wait to turn sixteen to get their driver’s license, I was not among that crowd.  Part of it had to do with having some not-so-great experiences behind the wheel during Driver’s Ed class and practice driving with my Mom.  My first time behind the wheel, I was swerving so badly, you would have thought I was in some crazy video game instead of in an actual vehicle.  Part of my shyness about driving also stemmed from an event from the summer I was between 8th and 9th grade.  My cousin was heading home from a drive-in movie with two cousins of his and another friend when they were struck by a big truck.  All of the passengers died; only my cousin survived.

The boys in that car were well-known to my family.  We went to the same church.  One of them had just graduated 8th grade with me; we had been in the same confirmation class.  My brother had played baseball with them for several summers.  It was my first time having someone I knew that well of my own age dying.  It shook me up, and I looked at driving at the time with a sense of dread rather than excitement.

So, when I was in high school and had the opportunity to volunteer to be a Candy Stripe, my mother said I could, however, she felt it should be my responsibility to get there and back; she was not going to play taxi for me.

Thus began my first journey by bus.  With it I took my first steps toward independence.  It was an exciting time for me.  I was going places on my own, and I didn’t have to wait for Mom and Dad to take me.  I learned the various routes and schedules, and I was soon going other places than St. Joe’s; I would go to the library downtown, or head over to the Genesee Valley mall.  As long as the bus was running, I could go pretty much anywhere I wanted.

Even after I began driving at nineteen, the bus was an alternative means of transportation when my car was being worked on.  I used the bus less and less when I was driving though.  It wasn’t until after I left my first husband that bus travel became a regular part of my life again.  My car had broken down right before I left, and I wasn’t in a financial position to fix it.  I sold it and never looked back.  I started using the bus again, and the bus became a regular part of my life until I married my husband Bill.

So now, here I am, riding the bus again.  While I occasionally feel frustrated about the limitations bus travel imposes, I still feel much of that same feeling of independence I felt as a teen.  I wondered the other day, if any of my ancestors had used mass transit on a regular basis in their own lives, and if so, how it made them feel.

A Trip Interrupted by Flood

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death certificate, Flint, flood, funeral card, genealogy, information, interruption, journey, McCombs, Michigan, military, obituary, path, road, Slaughter, Taylor

Turning aside from my own family tree, I had been travelling the path of my husband Bill’s ancestors.  I enjoyed learning about his Transylvanian heritage, and discovering the ships that had brought his great-grandparents and grandparents to the United States.

Now, I turned my attention to Bill’s mother’s side of the family.  Once again, I was entering data for all the family members we knew of, and I was getting hints here and there to explore further into the past.  Already, we had seen some of the direction that this path would take us.  Bill’s cousin had shared with us information about the research a friend of his had helped him with, and how it had taken them back to Armstrong County, Pennsylvania, where Bill’s mother’s paternal line had settled.

However, the trip I was taking into this portion of the family tree was soon interrupted.  It was not because we had run out of items to research; we had barely scratched the surface of what Bill’s cousin had told us.  The interruption came from the fact that I had received new information from my father regarding my side of the family.  It was time to return to my original path.

The information my Dad sent me came to me via email over the span of a few days. My original request had been to see if I could get any more information for the brother whose children I was trying to locate.  We were still waiting for the military records my Dad had requested.  Apparently, because my Uncle had at one point served in a classified area, the military wanted to find out exactly what we were looking for.  They actually called my father to discuss it with him.

So, Dad started by sending me the obituaries he had for his brother, which at least then gave me dates of birth and death.  One was from the Flint Journal, the local paper in my home town.  The other was from the Arkansas Gazette, which was from the state my uncle was residing in.  In the email, my Dad mentioned that he had other obituaries and asked if I wanted them.

Did I ever!  I told him to send me whatever he could as far as the family went.  Obituaries, birth and death records, pictures; I wanted whatever he could send me.

And so, I began getting email after email (nine in all). Besides my uncle’s obituary, I got his funeral card.  My father had obituaries for his other brother and sister as well.  I received funeral cards for his parents and for my Grandma Opal, my grandfather’s second wife.  My Great Aunt Jeanette’s obit was there, and there was a funeral card for her father, Joseph McCombs as well as his obituary.  There was a funeral card for a cousin of my father’s, one that I remember very well, and for his father, my Aunt Jeanette’s brother-in-law, James Slaughter.

There was even more to come.  My Dad sent me death certificates for both his parents and for my great-grandfather, Joseph McCombs!  He also sent me obituaries for both of my Taylor great-grandparents, as well as a newspaper story about a family reunion, and a “ripped from the headlines” story that could very well have been a plot of a story for Law & Order:  SVU if the show had been on back then.  That story intrigues me, and though it does not appear to have been about my family, someone kept it for a reason, and I’m curious as to why.

So, my trip through Bill’s family history was interrupted by flood.  It was a flood of information about my own family that had me postpone working on his tree a while, so I could delve back into mine.  I was glad I could.  One of the pieces I mentioned turned out to be quite a discovery!

The Long and Winding Road

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adventure, Ancestry.com, Arkansas, Dunklin County, Flint, genealogy, investigation, journey, Malden, Michigan, Missouri, path, road, Sevier County, Taylor, US Census, Virginia, West Virginia

When I decided to trace my great-grandfather’s journey from West Virginia to Malden, Missouri, I never realized what a long and winding road his path would take!  Malden was his family’s final destination, but by no means was it their only one.

I had already found a 1930 US Census that showed my grandparents had already moved to my home town of Flint, Michigan.  As my grandfather was their youngest child, it was likely all the children were married or out of the house.  Once I found the 1930 census, it confirmed my suspicions:

Portion of the 1930 US Census showing my great-grandparents.

My great-grandparents were living by themselves.  I knew where my grandfather was at this time.  Where were all of his siblings?

I did learn a few things from this survey.  My great-grandparents owned a home, valued at $1,500 (not bad considering that this was after the start of the Great Depression).  While you cannot see it from this except, my great-grandfather was not working, nor had he ever been a veteran.  There was a discrepancy between the 1900 US Census and this one:  back in 1900, my great-grandmother had been listed as being born in West Virginia like her husband, William Henry.  However, on this census, she was listed as being born in Virginia!  Which one was correct?

I decided to keep working backwards, and found them again in 1920 in Malden, Missouri, this time with one child still at home.

1920 and one child left in the house: my grandfather!

Georgia didn’t seem to know which side of the state line she was born on.  This time, not only is she born in West Virginia, but so are her parents!  In 1930, they, like her, had crossed over the border to be born in Virginia.

As I continued research on this and other parts of my family tree, I  would learn over and over again that records can contain inaccurate and sometimes misleading information.  I also began to distinguish between primary source data, and secondary source data.

The US Census contains a mixture of both.  It is a primary source for where a person resided on the date that the census occurred.  Much of the other data though is a secondary data source.  Ages and birth year and month, places of birth, and places of parent’s birth are second-hand information on these records.  Other records (like a birth certificate) would be a primary data source that could confirm the information on the census.

For now though, I would continue one more decade back and fill in the last gap.  With the information on the 1910 US Census, I would be able to see the movements of my ancestors over a 40-year span.

So:

• 1930 – Malden, Missouri
• 1920 – Malden, Missouri
• 1910 – ?
• 1900 – Daviess County, Missouri

My working theories were:

1. The family would still be in Daviess County.
2. The family would be somewhere in Missouri between Daviess County and Dunklin County, where Malden is.
3. Since some of the children had been born in Nebraska prior to 1900, the family might have moved back there for a time between the two locations in Missouri.
4. The family would have already moved to Malden.

It’s nice to have theories, but of course it is the facts that will show where their path had really taken them.  And, once again, the path led to a place I didn’t expect.

In 1910, my family lived in...Arkansas?

Here’s a copy of the 1900 Census too:

My Grandfather and His Family

It didn’t faze me in the least that in 1900 my grandfather was listed as Floyd R. and in 1910 was listed as Ralfa.  Ralph was his middle name, and Ralfa I am sure, was a misspelling on the part of some well-meaning census worker.  The M in Anna M. stood for Maud, so again, they had been easy to match up.  Of course, Hazel and Ethel were pretty obvious matches.

What of the other children?  Well, I knew from 1900 that my great-grandmother had nine children and eight were living.  I noticed in 1910, the number of living children had dropped to six.  Two of my grandfather’s siblings had died.  We knew for sure the four children listed on the 1910 Census were alive.  The four not on this census were Millard D., Oscar R., Boyd, and Lucy D..  Which two had lived, and which two had died?

I wondered what had brought my great-grandparents to Arkansas.  You could almost draw a line straight down from Daviess County to Sevier County.  What had sparked their southern migration?  And why, within 10 years, had they returned to Missouri, this time settling in the southeast corner of the state?

It was certainly a long and winding road I had discovered on my great-grandparents’ journey to the West.  From the information I had gathered so far, they had left West Virginia some time prior to 1885 (the approximate year their oldest known child was born in Nebraska).  They stayed in Nebraska long enough to have at least five children.  From there, the family traveled to Daviess County, Missouri, which is likely where my grandfather was born (and possibly at least two other siblings as well).  The unknown 9th child could have been born in any of these locations.  All we know for now is that as of 1900, the child no longer was alive.

By 1910, the family had lost two more of its children, and gained one new family member, a mother-in-law (which means this would be my great-great-grandmother).  The name is listed as what appears to be Luveza Olaker (Ancestry.com listed the name as Luvcza Olaker, but I think my interpretation of the handwriting is closer to the truth).  Two of the children had also moved on to their own paths in life.  The family had also moved south and slightly west to Sevier County, Arkansas, a county just to the east of the Oklahoma border, and not too far away from the northeast border of Texas.

Ten short years later, the family returned to Missouri, this time residing in Dunklin County in the town of Malden.  The 1920 Census only shows my grandfather residing in the home with his parents.  There is not information given on this Census to indicate whether there are fewer living children now; we only know that by 1920, my grandfather’s remaining siblings had left their parents’ home.  In 1920, I also learned that my great-grandfather was running a furniture store, and my grandfather was listed as being in sales (was he working for his father?).

By 1930, my grandfather had already moved out on his own and was working on raising a family of his own in Flint, Michigan.  His parents, still residing in Malden, were no longer working.  They lived in a house they owned.

I had exhausted this path for the moment, and so I turned to yet another detour.  However, a surprising piece of information would soon come my way that would confirm much of the research I had just done.