Memories of My Dad

Tags

death, family, father, memory, Taylor

My Dad

On Monday, I received the news from my brother that our Dad had passed away. This was not unexpected; his health had been declining the past few months, and doctors had recently advised us that there was nothing more they could do medically for him. I am sad that he is no longer with us, but glad that he no longer is suffering.

I have had a lot of thoughts running through my head about my Dad, and wanted to share some of my memories of him.

My Mom may have taught me how to read, but my Dad taught me to love reading

I remember Mom working with me on learning to read when I was young.  I started reading before I was in Kindergarten.  However, when I think of who inspired me to read, it was my Dad.

Other than magazines, I don’t ever recall in my younger days my Mom reading much of anything. Dad, on the other hand, was always reading.  He loved science fiction in particular, and loved Star Trek books.  E. E. “Doc” Smith was a favorite author of his, and he, like me, would read favorite books over and over.

One of the things I remember most though was that Dad was the one to read me bedtime stories.  He had a book called “The Little Lame Prince” that had other stories in it as well.

The book was given to my Dad as a Christmas present by his Aunt Jeanette.

 

I was enchanted when I was little about the stories of the Brownie, and all of the mischief he would get into. Dad made reading come alive for me.

An illustration from the story “Brownie and the Cherry Tree”

Thanks to my Dad, I grew up on Star Trek and Godzilla movies

Dad’s love of science fiction extended beyond the page, and I grew up watching a lot of sci-fi with my Dad.  Most of the shows we watched were broadcast by the Detroit TV stations.  WXYZ (channel 7) showed a lot of monster movies, and Godzilla, Mothra, Rodan, and Gamera made regular appearances on our set.  WKBD (channel 50) was the channel to watch for Star Trek, and Dad made sure we were tuned in almost every week.

Dad had a lot of other shows he watched regularly.  Again, most of the shows I can remember watching with him had a sci-fi slant.

• Twilight Zone
• The Outer Limits
• Lost in Space
• Space 1999
• Battlestar Galactica

Dad almost wore out our video tape of Top Gun watching one scene over and over

He would start at about 2:48 and watch the multiple plane shots over and over. It amounted to less than a minute of film, but he would watch it for several minutes at a time. I don’t know what he was trying to see, but it was something on which he would really focus .

Dad loved cartoons, especially Yosemite Sam

Dad would watch cartoons with us sometimes. He liked Loony Toons in general, and his favorite was Yosemite Sam.  His all time favorite cartoon was High Diving Hare. He would get a chuckle out of watching Sam fall for every trick Bugs Bunny would play on him.

Dad could do a pretty decent Yosemite Sam impersonation, too.

Dad liked to play games

Times spent with family usually meant some type of game.  When we would go to my Aunt Marion and Uncle Howard’s, Pinochle or Euchre of some other card game was normal.  When we would go to Grandma and Grandpa Newell’s house, the adults would usually play Aggravation. They would play teams with my Mom and Dad against her sisters and their husbands. When we were at Aunt Georgia and Uncle Neil’s, it was usually Tonk.

Dad made this Aggravation board on his Shop Smith Mark V. That shows you how much he liked to play the game.

Games didn’t have to just be indoors. The male pastime in the summer was typically horseshoes. When we were younger (and they were still legal) we used to play Lawn Darts at our house. I can remember playing both football and baseball in our front yard, as well as badminton and volleyball.

Dad waiting his turn at the horseshoe pit.

Dad was competitive

Dad I think would have played sports more in high school if not for two things:

1. He twisted his knee in high school, an injury that gave him trouble on and off throughout his life.
2. He had Polio in high school, and missed time because of it.

I think part of his liking to play games was part of his competitive nature. There were other competitions as well. When we would go to my Aunt Georgia’s house, he would sometimes get together with my Uncle Neil (and if he was there, his brother, Howard) and do some type of shooting competition.  They would set up a target and take turns at it.

Dad taught my brother and I to fish

Fletcher’s Pond is the name of the place where I remember going one of the first times fishing.  However, it was not the last.  We fished at Crystal Lake on my Uncle Tom’s boat and caught salmon in the Betsie River.  We fished at the pond at Aunt Georgia’s farm.  We fished from our own boat on Mott Lake and Lake Nepessing.

1992 – Using the skills my Dad taught me.

Dad made sure I knew how to cast a line and reel in my catch, and he made me bait the hook as well.

One movie scared my Dad so much as a child, he would not watch it as an adult

While this seems rather tame by movie standards today, this movie scared the heck out of my Dad when it first came out in 1946. To a six-year old child, a murderous disembodied hand was probably extremely scary. As a teenager, I was up watching it one night (a late night movie in the dark), and my Dad came in, took one look at the screen, and retreated without a word. Perhaps a scene like this one brought up those frightening childhood memories:

Dad taught me girls can do the same things boys can

Dad didn’t keep me from doing things just because I was a girl.  I never had any interest in shooting a gun, so he never taught me to shoot, but he did teach me to fish.  I learned to leg wrestle, as did my brother.  I was included when there was a game of football, or baseball.  We played Horse together.  When I first started driving, Dad showed me how to check and maintain my oil and tire pressure, basics that he said any driver should know. I never felt that I couldn’t do something just because I was a girl.

Car trips with Dad were fun

Dad was always doing something to keep a car ride entertaining, especially if it were a long ride.  I am not sure if he was the one that came up with the ABC game, but he was always a participant when one started.  My brother and I, if tied and waiting for the last letter, would be waiting for the chance to spot the Zephyr station at Carpenter Road and Saginaw Street.

He had a few standards that he would pull out.  He did a parody of the old Ajax commercial that went like this:

Use Ajax (bom bom)/The foaming beer (ba baba ba ba bom bom)/Floats your guts/Right out your rear (baba baba baba bom)

And, at some point, he would usually sing the last verse of this song, beeping the horn at the last part:

There was also a word game that I believe my cousin Danny introduced to us one Christmas that came up from time to time.  The idea was to start with the first line and have everyone say that line, then continue adding lines.  If you made a mistake, you were out.

• A big fat hen.
• A couple of ducks.
• Three brown bear.
• Four running hare.
• Five fat females sitting on a fence.
• Six Simple Simons sitting on a stump.
• Seven Sicilian sailors sailing the seven seas.
• Eight egotistical egoists echoing egotistical ecstasies.
• Nine Nubian nymphs nimbly nibbling on gnats knuckles and nicotine.

My brother and I added a few more:

• Ten treacherous tarantulas torturing Turkish troops.
• Eleven Lebanese lions lurching on luminous llamas.

At one point, I had it up to twenty, but never played that far most of the time, so they are forgotten.

You have to remember, this was before the time of hand-held devices and video players in cars.  We were having fun, and scenes like this rarely, if ever happened:

Dad could sing and play the piano, but he wouldn’t always play/sing the whole song

Growing up, we had an old upright piano.  Dad would often go in and play.  He would never use sheet music, so he would play from memory.  I think though that is why he would only play up to a point.

One of my favorite pieces is this one, which he learned to play in high school:

Dad also played The Moonlight Sonata, The Lord’s Prayer, Cool Clear Water, Yellow Bird, Young Love, and Jailhouse Rock.  I learned the first part of The Moonlight Sonata because it was another favorites piece of mine, and, even though I do not have a piano now, I still have much of my Dad’s sheet music.

Dad was a good dancer

While I am not that great, Dad was a good lead, and though we didn’t have a lot of dances together, this one is the one I will always remember.

1999 – Dad and I dancing at my wedding

I love you Dad!

Three Records; One Life

Tags

birth, death, Taylor, US Census, West Virginia

In the last week or so, I have been trying to flesh out more of the family of one of my paternal Great-grandfathers, William Henry Taylor.  William Henry, or W H as he is often listed in records, was born in West Virginia.  A few years after marrying my Great-grandmother, they moved to Nebraska.  They moved around over the years, and in earlier blog posts I have detailed the moves.  Eventually, my Great-grandparents settled in Malden, Missouri, where they lived out their remaining years.

What I originally set out to do was to locate the birth record for William Henry Taylor. I knew his birth information from his obituary and his death certificate.  There was a one day discrepancy between the two.  While both showed November, 1857 as the month and year, the obituary listed the day as the 10th, while the death certificate listed it as the 11th.  Which one was correct?

From the death certificate, I also knew the names of both parents:  John C Taylor and Eliza Ann Oldaker.  I hoped I wouldn’t have much difficulty in locating the birth certificate for William Henry.

My research was done on the search site for West Virginia Vital Records.  If you have family from West Virginia, I recommend using this site if you want to find records of birth, marriage, or death.  While most records start in the 1850’s, there are a few counties that go back to the 1790’s, long before West Virginia was declared a state in 1863.

Unfortunately, things didn’t turn out the way I’d hoped.  W H was proving to be elusive.  He however, was not the only child of John and Eliza Taylor, and I had more success with some of his siblings.

 

These are the names of the children of John and Eliza Taylor in birth order (name in bold type means I have found their birth record:

• Lydia A (have also seen Phoebe A M listed on a record as an alternate name)
• Benjamin Ison
• William Henry
• Joseph Elza
• Alonzo F
• Aaron L
• Luretta A J (have seen Lunetta R as an alternate name)
• Margarett J
• John C

This post deals with the youngest sibling I have found:  John C Taylor.

I believe John C was likely named after his father.  I don’t know much about naming traditions yet, but I have seen a lot of children whose names were a combination of their grandparents names (a hint on Ancestry.com that I haven’t followed yet shows that my 3x Great-grandfather could be Henry Taylor and I believe William could have been an Oldaker based on other hints I’ve received.

I found John’s birth record quite easily:

The year is 1880. As you can see, the date of birth is April 8th.

Being this was the beginning of a new decade, the US Census was likely to have a record for baby John, and I was not disappointed.  This was the household on June 12, 1880:

 

As you can see, the oldest four children, including my Great-grandfather, are no longer living with their parents. Notice that both mother and child are listed as ill at the time of the census. I cannot be sure, but it looks like the word listed there might be dysentry – possibly dysentery. Dropsy is also listed as an illness for the mother. The older John’s sister Catherine is living with them. Is she there perhaps to help take care of her sick nephew and his mother?

Wikipedia lists dysentery as “an inflammatory disorder of the intestine, especially of the colon, that results in severe diarrhea containing blood and mucus in the feces with fever, abdominal pain, and rectal tenesmus (a feeling of incomplete defecation), caused by any kind of infection.”  Dropsy is edema or swelling, and could be caused by any number of factors, including diseases of the kidneys or heart.

Especially for such a young child, dysentery could have serious consequences, as the diarrhea could cause dehydration.  And, unfortunately for young John, that was the case:

The death record says the cause of death was not known. John died on June 16th, just 4 days after the Census was completed.

It is sad to see any life cut short.  For this one life, three records are all that we have to show the brief span of time that young John was on this earth.

 

 

A Tale of Two Irons

Tags

family, lore, Newell, Taylor

I had been struggling today to decide on what to write about.  Not having any particular thing in mind, I turned my attention to my Google Reader, to catch up on the genealogy blogs I follow.  In doing so, I came across a post made earlier this month by Sheryl Lazarus on her blog “A Hundred Years Ago” about ironing.  It brought to mind two pieces of family lore about irons and ironing.

The first story is about my Aunt Georgia and my Grandma Taylor.  When the ironing had to be done, Aunt Georgia told me that to pass the time, she and my grandmother would read poetry to one another.  They would take turns, one of them ironing, and the other reading aloud, until all the clothes were pressed.  My Aunt Georgia’s favorite was “The Fool’s Prayer” by Edward Rowland Sill:

THE FOOL’S PRAYER

by: Edward Rowland Sill (1841-1887)

The royal feast was done; the King

Sought some new sport to banish care,

And to his jester cried: “Sir Fool,

Kneel now, and make for us a prayer!”

 

The jester doffed his cap and bells,

And stood the mocking court before;

They could not see the bitter smile

Behind the painted grin he wore.

 

He bowed his head, and bent his knee

Upon the Monarch’s silken stool;

His pleading voice arose: “O Lord,

Be merciful to me, a fool!

 

“No pity, Lord, could change the heart

From red with wrong to white as wool;

The rod must heal the sin: but Lord,

Be merciful to me, a fool!

 

“‘T is not by guilt the onward sweep

Of truth and right, O Lord, we stay;

‘T is by our follies that so long

We hold the earth from heaven away.

 

“These clumsy feet, still in the mire,

Go crushing blossoms without end;

These hard, well-meaning hands we thrust

Among the heart-strings of a friend.

 

“The ill-timed truth we might have kept–

Who knows how sharp it pierced and stung?

The word we had not sense to say–

Who knows how grandly it had rung!

 

“Our faults no tenderness should ask.

The chastening stripes must cleanse them all;

But for our blunders — oh, in shame

Before the eyes of heaven we fall.

 

“Earth bears no balsam for mistakes;

Men crown the knave, and scourge the tool

That did his will; but Thou, O Lord,

Be merciful to me, a fool!”

 

The room was hushed; in silence rose

The King, and sought his gardens cool,

And walked apart, and murmured low,

“Be merciful to me, a fool!”

“The Fool’s Prayer” is reprinted from The Little Book of American Poets: 1787-1900. Ed. Jessie B. Rittenhouse. Cambridge: Riverside Press, 1915.

The second story of ironing is about my brother, Tim.  At one point in his young age, Tim liked to iron when he would visit my Grandma Newell’s house.  For hours I’m told, he would pretend to iron, using a container of baby powder as his iron of choice.  Back and forth his little arm would go, smoothing out the wrinkles of imaginary pieces of fabric.

At some point, the family decided that since he liked to iron so much, they would get him a toy iron so he could play with a “real” iron.  The gift was given, and the family waited to watch Tim with his new toy.  From what I’m told, he picked it up, set it aside, and went right on “ironing” with his baby powder box!

The toy iron did get some use though; when I was old enough, I played with it. 🙂

Thanks, Sheryl, for inspiring me to share these stories!

In Search of…Baby Taylor

Tags

adventure, birth, death, In Search of..., investigation, marriage, mystery, Nebraska, path, road, search, Taylor, US Census, vital records, West Virginia

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:

7

Annie C Taylor

1883

Lewis

1390 Kb

23

Taylor

13 Dec 1883

Upshur

856 Kb

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.

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.

 

A Mother is to…

Tags

book, memory, Mom, mother, Mother's Day, school, story, Taylor

When I was in either second or third grade, our teacher had us make books for our parents.  Since Mother’s Day was yesterday, I thought I would share the book I made for my Mother.  It’s been about 40 years since I wrote this.

The cover shows amazingly little wear, despite its age.

We wrote the book with a simple formula.  Each page started with “A Mother is to”, and then we would write what we thought a mother was expected to do.  Looking at this book is a peek back at the things I felt important at the time.  It has a lot of good memories associated with it.

With each part of the story, we drew an illustration.  I can’t say that my artwork shows much imagination, but then again, I was a young child at the time.  Our teacher typed our stories and then bound them into books for us.

I’m going to present the book page by page.  If you scroll over the picture, there will be my comments as an adult looking back on what I wrote.

A Mother is to Take You to the Beauty Shop to Get Your Hair Cut
by
Pam Taylor

A mother is to help you with homework after school.

A mother is to go to the market with you after school.

A mother is to keep you company when there’s nothing to do.

A mother is to join you in brownies.

A mother is to take you to the beauty shot to get your hair cut.

A mother is to let you make gingerbread by yourself.

A mother is to boss you.

A mother is to take you places.

A mother is to move things.

A mother is to help you in bed at night.

Happy Anniversary!

Tags

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.

From Roots to a Branch

Tags

adventure, Air Force, Ancestry.com, Bunny, genealogy, investigation, journey, military, mystery, Taylor

I found you!  Kunta Kinte!  I found you!

— Alex Haley, Roots:  The Next Generations

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!

Photographs and Memories

Tags

adventure, Bunny, Detroit Suburbs, genealogy, journey, Lubbock, McCombs, memories, Michigan, mystery, photographs, Taylor, Texas

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.

Discovery

Tags

adventure, Ancestry.com, Arkansas, Daviess County, discovery, Dunklin County, genealogy, information, journey, Malden, Missouri, Nebraska, obituary, Taylor, US Census, West Virginia

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.