Tag: Brick Wall

Solving Two 44-Year Old Brick Walls Part 2

Photo courtesy of Lori Samuelson

Last week I began the saga of how I finally broke through two brick walls; I had two baptismal certificates but could find no information on what had become of the individuals. My goal has always been to find closer family and return the certificates. You can catch up on the story by reading Part 1 here.

TALK IT OUT

I shared what I had found with my family and my concern I didn’t have the right man. My husband said, to his knowledge, none of his family had ever lived in northwestern Indiana. This conversation led to a list of places he knew his family had lived – Fayette County in the 1820s, the Elkhart/South Bend area since the 1830s, Porter and Lake counties since the 1850s. I clearly remembered he had some relatives in the late 1800s in the Muncie and Bloomington areas but Garrett, nope, never heard of that. Only, I had, but didn’t remember!

In the conversation we had about people moving about I recalled a letter his grandmother had received from someone about a motorcycle trip that they had taken to North Dakota. I decided to go back through the old letters to find out who that person was. While doing that, I solved my brick wall. . .

TRANSCRIBE

The envelope I found (shown above) shocked me as it was written to his grandmother who was living in Garrett in c/o Wm. Johnson. I immediately showed my husband and he said, “No way.” I then discovered I had a letter written from Garrett to a “Dear Sister” in 1911.

After transcribing the letter, I analyzed it for further clues. The problem with the letter, however, was that there was no envelope, it was signed by “Anna and Dickie” and written to “Dear Sister.” Most of the letters in the collection were written to Elsie Johnson Harbaugh, Oskar’s half-sister, so that was likely who the sister was. The marriage license for Oskar was to a woman named Anna Blair, so the writer may have been Anna but who was Dickie? No Oskar, Willie, or William is ever mentioned in the letter.

RESEARCH OTHERS LISTED

Clearly, the letter was not written by Oskar as the letter writer stated: 

1. “I have six brothers, all married.” Anders and Thilda’s sons were Johan, Carl, Oscar, Charlie, Willie, and Andrew. Those are 6 boys, however, the letter writer would not have included himself in the count of people he had to write to and why would he inform his half-sister of his siblings as she would have already known that information?

2.“I have one brother in Chicago, has lived there, for more than six years, ever since he was married, he is an electrician.” I had no idea where most of the children from the first marriage lived. Their sister, Ida, lived in Chicago with her husband, Charles Johnberg, in 1920. The couple married in Porter County, Indiana in 1917. They would not have been in Chicago together in 1912 when the letter was written.

3. “also one sister and two other brothers that are single.” The sons from the first marriage had four full sisters–Anna, Ida, Selma, and Nellie, who had probably died by the time the letter was written, and three half-sisters–Helen, Elsie, and Ruth, so this did not fit with Oskar or one of his siblings being the letter writer.

4.“I live right across the street from my Mother, or I don’t know what I would do.” The mother of the sons died in 1891.

It was time to research Anna Blair who married William Johnson in Garrett, DeKalb, Indiana in June 1911. From the 1920 US federal census, William was shown working in Garrett as a brakeman on the railroad. The letter mentions that Dickie worked on the railroad. William was living with his wife, Anna, son Eugene, and brother Andrew, who likely was the Anders Teodor I had a baptism certificate for. Next door to the couple is Fred and Josephine Blair, likely the parents of Anna Blair. Researching Anna further showed that indeed, her parents were Fred and Josephine Blair. Anna did have six married brothers with one who lived in Chicago and was an electrician. In 1911, she also had a sister and two brothers who were single. Her siblings were William, Franklin, Fredrick, John, Andrew, Leo, Oscar, Claude, and Hattie. She also noted that she lived right across the street from her mother which the census supports. So, Anna Blair, wife of William Johnson, was writing the letter probably to Elsie, William’s half-sister.

GET CREATIVE WITH NAMES

But I still didn’t know who Dickie was! Anna and William’s son was named Eugene in the 1920 census. Was Oskar-Willie-William-also being called Dickie?! I decided to further research Eugene.

An Indiana birth certificate shows that the son was named Eugene Richard Johnson. Dickie was probably the child’s nickname based on his middle name. Perhaps Oskar liked the name and Anna was using it for him, too. I’m beginning to think it was a family tradition to just pull a name out of nowhere and begin using it.

As I continued to research the family to discover what became of them, as I was hoping I could find a living relative to return the baptism certificate to, I discovered that Anna was listed as a widow in the 1930 US Federal census. I have been unable to find a death certificate for Oskar, though, through newspaper research, found that he died in 1929 in South Bend, Indiana. He had left railroad work after representing his fellow employees and was unsuccessful in negotiating with management to remove armed guards from the trains in Garrett. At the time of his death, he was working as a welder in an automobile plant. At age 41, he died of a heart attack. Anna returned with Dickie to live in Garrett. It was there she had Oskar entombed in a mausoleum in a Roman Catholic Cemetery. Oskar’s baptism certificate was for the Lutheran faith. The cemetery was established for Roman Catholics in the late 1800s, however, it did accept other Christian denominations for separate burials. Don’t discount a burial in a cemetery of another faith! Remember, if there was no pre-planning the dead don’t get any say in where they are laid to rest. Interestingly, Oskar lies in the mausoleum which I’ve been told by the present owners, is not their responsibility and they don’t know who actually owns it. It is also a mixed burial site, meaning anyone of any faith is buried there. The records for the mausoleum are also missing so I can’t find who paid for the burial. I also can’t enter it as when we tried to visit it was locked. The present owners of the cemetery, the Roman Catholic Church, do not have a key and didn’t know that the door locked. Sigh!

The tombstone and findagrave.com memorial for Oskar is listed as Wm. O. Johnson. So, the records were now showing that Oskar Wilhelm Johannesson in 1886 became Willie Jonshon in 1900 and by 1911 William Johnson. In 1917, his wife was referring to him as Dickie in family correspondence but the 1920 census shows him as William Johnson. When he was buried, his wife had his tombstone engraved as Wm. O. Johnson. I’m guessing the O was for Oskar.

I have located and reached out to Oskar Wilhelm – Willie – William – Dickie – Wm. O.’s sole living grandchild as I would like to finally, after 44 years, return the baptismal certificate to a closer relative. So far, the grandchild hasn’t responded.

Research shows that I’ll be keeping Anders Teodor – Andrew’s baptismal certificate as, after Oskar left Garrett, Anders returned to live in Porter County, Indiana. He never married and was killed by an automobile as he walked along the side of a road in 1933, shortly after the only known picture of him was taken with his siblings. This also explains why Oskar wasn’t pictured; he was likely dead. The photo was probably not from circa the late 1920s but circa the early 1930s.

My distant cousin William Shakespeare wrote that “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet;” I believe that applies to solving a brick wall with whatever name the individual wanted to be called by. Anders Ludvig Johannesson became Gust Johnson; Oskar Wilhem Johanson becomes William “Dickie” O. Johnson. For all these years I had the clues to solve the puzzle but it took experience, FAN research, a 111-year-old letter, a 105-year-old envelope, and online databases to crack the mystery.

I will be taking the next two weeks off for the holidays. Hope whatever you celebrate is merry and bright – see you in January 2023!

A Strange Way to Select a Genealogy Research Project

Had a strange Sunday morning courtesy of my family.  

I got a wake up call from one of my adult kids asking me to list my top 12 dead ancestors that I needed  info on.  That made me laugh as I was thinking yesterday I need to move on from my Duer-Hollingsheads who I found a wealth of info for over the summer and now things have dried up.  Like most of the world, I’m over the pandemic and am starting to make plans for when we can travel again. While gardening, I thought I would list relatives I planned on researching by geographic region so that I could identify areas for trips in 2022 (yeah, I’m being overly cautious here.)

Within minutes I emailed my kid a list of 24 ancestor brick walls – 12 on my side and 12 on my husband’s side.  

A few minutes later I got another call that said, “Mom, you have to pair that list down to 12 total!”  Okay, sigh, 6 from each list.  

Since I was already on email I started reading and found I had two Ancestry messages over night and one email message addressed to my website.  Two were regarding Leiningers and one was Harbaugh.  People who discovered books and photos as they were cleaning and looking on Ancestry or my blog, found the named folks on my tree.  They were hoping to give the items a new home. Since I didn’t list one Harbaugh or Leininger on my brick wall list, this was personally hysterical as those two lines always seem to nudge me when I am working on other family.  

Minutes later, my kid brings over the cake pictured above.  On each tombstone is one of the names I had supplied that are a brick wall.  The chocolate pudding cake with cream cheese frosting was delicious.  The “dirt” on top is crushed Nilla wafer cookies dyed with food coloring.  Child had bought the cake mix at the start of the pandemic and said, “Let’s bury this thing and move on.” I agree!

I also got a homemade awesome Ancestor Hunter T-Shirt.  Neither of my kids have interest in genealogy but they are crafty and when the mood strikes, no telling what they’ll come up with.  

The weather was beautiful so we decided we’d have cake and coffee outside.  I was walking down the cobblestone path my husband had installed several years ago and took one step off onto the “grass.”  Unbelievably, my right leg sunk to mid calf.  My kid grabbed me as I sunk, originally thinking I had lost my balance and was about to fall. 

There is a reasonable explanation of why the ground gave way in that spot – we had a heavy rain last night and several years ago, a 200 + year old oak tree had been growing there.  We had to have the tree removed after a third of it blew down in a hurricane. The roots have been decaying for years and we guess, with the heavy rain, the ground just collapsed.  

I’ve never been stuck in quick sand but it was a creepy feeling to all of a sudden just sink into the ground.  I had difficulty pulling my leg back out of the hole.  Don’t know if my ancestors were ticked off or not but it was weird to be holding Daniel Hollingshead’s candy tombstone while I sunk over a foot into the ground. Yes, I know I need to move on from Daniel but I am still searching for his lost Bible so he remains up on the top of my list. 

We settled down to eat a slice of cake and child says, “I had real trouble with one of the tombstones. Catherine Jarvis’s keeps falling over and hitting Wilson Williams.”  Umm, Catherine was Wilson’s daughter-in-law!  They lived near each other in Long Island, however, Wilson’s “stone,” which I have blogged about in the past, is no longer in the cemetery next to his wife, Margaret Hicks.  It was this same child of mine that had discovered that at the Family History Library several years ago.  Of course, with no interest in genealogy, there was no remembrance of the names and the finding. 

If there’s a message in all this I have no idea what it would be.  I re-read my original Wilson and Margaret posts you can find here and here. They are still on my brick wall list as I need further proof of their parents.  Family lore gave me the parents’ names but I have no proof of that.  I’m thinking that’s who I need to research this afternoon, along with Catherine Jarvis.

If I find something wonderful I will definitely share it and use this unique approach again!  Since the world has certainly gone insane a novel way to research just might be what’s needed.  Consuming the name of a dead relative on a candy tombstone is weird but fits right in with the spirit of the month.  Happy Hunting!

Sometimes You Just Have to Pay for a Record

Not everything in life is free. Genealogy can be expensive, however, IMHO, it has become much less expensive than at any time in the past. Folks who don’t want to spend money on a subscription can use the library edition of Ancestry.com at their local library. Sure, it’s not the same as an individual subscription but it suffices for the hobbyist. Familysearch.org is free to anyone who create an account. There are lots of records available for no cost online but we are far from the day when everything is available on the web.

Last weekend, my local genealogy society offered it’s family help day. Seven of us spent the afternoon assisting interested folks in overcoming their brick wall. Maybe because it was such a beautiful spring day, our turnout was much lower than usual. I only assisted 2 people all afternoon.

The first woman I assisted had a lengthy handwritten letter written in the 1960’s that contained EXACT QUOTES purportedly said by a Revolutionary War patriot. We talked about kernels of truth in family lore and how it was unlikely that the letter writer had firsthand knowledge of a conversation that occurred nearly 200 years earlier.

Since the woman wanted her granddaughter to join the DAR, I went to their nifty ancestor search and lo and behold, there were several women who had joined based on the named individual. She was delighted. I provided her with the contact information for a local chapter that assists interested people at a nearby library. I then explained what she would need to bring them – her granddaughter’s birth certificate, her daughter’s and her birth and marriage record, and back to whoever the last connection to the DAR member was. She was reluctant to have to pay for any vitals. Unfortunately, there just is no way around that.

The next inquirer had done extensive research and I was pleased that he had brought it with him. He had three needed items – a probate record, a naturalization record and a marriage record. He knew where and how to obtain the documents that were not online. He just felt it was unfair to pay a New York City church $50.00 for the marriage record, the District of Columbia court for the probate record and the US Federal government for the naturalization record. He inquired how he could find a back door for the records. There isn’t one. The owner of the records sets the price based on how they value the record or the cost they believe they incur for someone to go in the archives and retrieve it. He was not happy to hear that. I suggested he prioritize which ones he wanted to obtain and pay based on his need. I also recommended he ask family to give him those records for his birthday, Father’s Day and other holidays. He laughed. Truly, family never knows what to give those interested in genealogy. I’m sure they’d be happy to help in giving a gift that is truly meaningful.

Both of these folks did not have a brick wall; they had a reluctance to spend money on a needed record. Sometimes, you just have to pay to get what you need.

Wilson William’s Wall

Originally published on genealogyatheart.blogspot.com 19 Apr 2015

brick-wall

The term “brick wall” in genealogy means an impasse has been reached and further knowledge is unavailable.  Conferences are always filled to capacity when the topic of how to break through a wall is presented. Those blocks affect us physically, through wasted time and resources, and emotionally, as frustration and disappointment.  It’s no surprise we’re interested to find a way through that obstacle.

Remember, though, that there are two sides to every wall.  The frustration of needing to detour from my intended route may cloud my view of a solution.  What I can’t clearly see ahead is probably safe and sound, just not yet accessible.  Isn’t that the reason why walls were built in the first place – for protection?  Next time you encounter a brick wall ancestor have a Zen moment and know the missing information is most likely safe somewhere just waiting to be found.

When a family member invited me to be her travel partner on an upcoming business trip to Salt Lake City I was delighted.  The Family History Library has always been on my bucket list but with work and other commitments, a vacation there wasn’t visible on my horizon. With the hotel and plane reserved, I forged ahead with research goal setting and planning, my fourth rule of genealogy.

“Failing to plan is planning to fail.” –Alan Lakein

My goal was to find clues on how to climb over at least one my top 10 walls in the four days I would be visiting.

To accomplish my goal, I identified who I would be researching.  This was difficult as I have a large family tree which results in many walls.  I decided to select 5 from my family and 5 from my husband’s side.  I cheated a bit and included spouses so my actual 10 was more like 15.

Then, I followed my number 1 rule of genealogy – write down everything you know and what you want to know – for each of the selected individuals. I also added where I found the information to prove what I did know.  Why?  Through experience I’ve learned that family lore is just that – a word of mouth tradition that someone may have misheard, misunderstood or mythologized. Think the childhood game, telephone, where a sentence is whispered child to child with the last player repeating aloud what he/she heard.  The last oral sentence is not the same as the first oral sentence. Just like the game, there is some similarities in family lore from the time of the original telling but not necessarily the whole story.

In the late 1990’s I discovered the truth about family lore the hard way. Happily clicking away on an online tree I had discovered and saving the info to my own tree, I never stopped to look where the poster had found his sources.   I spent several days adding many individuals to my husband’s side only to learn late one evening that, according to the online tree, he was the great grandson many times removed of Odin and Frigg, the Norse god and goddess.  My spouse is an awesome husband, a devoted dad, a dedicated employee and a loyal friend but it’s a stretch to believe his Grandpa was the founder of the runic alphabet and his Grandma was a sorceress.  He, understandably, liked what I found.  I had to spend many hours deleting the line one individual at a time and have since checked sources before including new information in my tree.

 “Genealogy without sources is mythology.” -Unknown

Definitely a painful but valuable learning experience!

I have also found it useful to review my previously discovered sources before researching further on a line I haven’t looked at for a while.  There may be a hint in plain sight that I missed earlier or by reviewing the record, I may gain a new perspective.

So in preparation for my trip, I pondered my sources for my husband’s 4th great grandfather, Wilson Williams, born in 1754 in Roslyn Harbor, Nassau, New York.  He is found in the 1790, 1800, 1810, 1820 and 1830 Federal censuses as living in North Hempstead, Queens, New York and he has been documented in several texts for his service during the American Revolution, as a witness in two court cases, and for being appointed to maintain the highways as he operated a stagecoach and a ferry to bring visitors between Long Island and Manhattan.  An accomplished carpenter, two of his homes still stand and have been on the Roslyn Landmark Society’s home tours several times. What I could not discover was when he died and where he was buried.  Collaborating with four cousins I met online, a hired genealogist, two research trips to Long Island and Troy, New York where his son had moved in the 1820’s, calls to numerous churches where he may have been a parishioner, cemeteries where he might have been buried, library and historical society visits and hours spent searching online over 16 years uncovered nothing.

I placed Wilson as my 10th brick wall as I was fairly certain that the five of us had checked every possibility in determining his death and burial.

At the Family History Library, I shared my information on Wilson with a genealogist and asked for her suggestions on where to go next.  She recommended checking microfilms of birth, marriage and death records for any church denomination of which Wilson may have been a member.  I narrowed the search to Presbyterian, Quaker and Dutch Reformed as Wilson’s grandchildren were members of those churches and his wife, Margaret, was buried in the Dutch Reformed Church Cemetery.  Many of the microfilms did not have indexes and the process was exhausting.  After several hours I got a text from my family member who asked if I was ready to go to dinner.  “On the last microfilm, be done soon,” I responded.  “Meet you there,” she replied.  Minutes later she appeared on the scene and asked if she could help.  “I’m looking for a record for Wilson Williams.  I’ve been through this film already but found the index at the very end.  I’m just double checking that I didn’t miss him.”  “I’ll do that,” she volunteered as I collected the other films to refile.  In less than 30 seconds she asked, “Is this who you’re looking for?” I glanced at the screen.

wilson1

Stunned, I couldn’t respond.  I reread the words.  Tears of joy moistened my eyes.  If I had not found the index and double checked, the wall would have remained.  Ironically, the family member who found the record is a DAR because of Wilson.

The next day I found another microfilm source for the cemetery where Wilson’s wife is buried:

wilson2

So the “W.W” on the “common field stone” buried in the same plot as wife, Margaret Hicks Williams, was Wilson Williams and he had been where he should have been the whole time.  The answer was clearly right there but none of us had found it.  How had Wilson remained invisible for so long?

“Leave no stone unturned.” -Euripides

Most likely, the field stone with just initials was either missing entirely or not noted by the Find-a-Grave volunteers transcribing and photographing the cemetery because they would have no idea what W.W. stood for.

When I returned home and was adding the pictures and citation to my tree I noticed that the cemetery was in Success, New York.  Success?  I thought the cemetery was in Nassau.  The microfilm noted that North Hempstead became Success which became Manhasset.  Sometime after the book was published it became Nassau.

So why weren’t the records at the church?  The church secretary I had contacted told me the church does not have records of the burials.  Doing a google book search I found that Onderdonk’s (1884) History of the Dutch Reformed Church mentions that the early records were sketchy.  To complicate the situation, a minister had died and the congregation was not in agreement on hiring a replacement.  Half wanted to have a new pastor sent from the Netherlands while the other half wanted to hire a pastor from New York.  Consequently, the church ended up with 2 pastors.  After ten years, one pastor took half the congregation and started another church a few miles away.  He took the records with him.

The records I was viewing were a transcription from the 1940’s copied by a Josephine Frost.  She noted that her transcript was from a book by Onderdonk that was in disrepair.  Frost was unable to find the original church records that had been donated to the Long Island Historical Society but they were available when Onderdonk published his book.  There are only 12 copies of Frost’s book.  They are in Cincinnati, OH, Indianapolis, IN, Harrisburg, PA, Ann Arbor, MI, 2 in Chicago, IL, Ithaca, NY, Independence, MO, Edmond, OK, Albany, NY, Provo, UT, and La Jolla, CA.  The Family History Library in Salt Lake City has a microfilm of one of these books.

Wilson Williams spent his entire life in Long Island, New York yet the 13 records of his death do not reside where he lived and died.  Sometimes looking in the most logical place will not give you the answer.  I had to detour more than 1900 miles to get over the wall.

The microfilm record gave me far more information on Wilson then just his date of death.  Next time, I’ll tell you more about the meaning of Wilson’s fieldstone marker.