Two New Year's Road-Trippers and a Van.

See also my website, https://anniebee4history.wixsite.com and my other blog, AnnieWritesAbout!

Happy, and Hopeful, 2021 to you all!!

Marty and I spent New Year's Day on the final leg of a cross-country trek in a van we had loaned to Marty's colleague Brian, who had borrowed it to transport equipment from California to his home in Savannah, Georgia. We flew to Savannah on Christmas Day, visited briefly with Brian and his wife, then headed west.

Savannah is a very charming town, and it was fun to go on a few walks in the historic district. Of course, we had to visit the childhood home of the great author, Flannery O'Connor!

A number of Marty's ancestors, from his paternal grandmother's Cheek family, are buried in Georgia, just outside of Augusta, so we stopped at two cemeteries on our way out west. From my research, I know that the surname Cheek (originally spelled Cheke) is from England, predominantly the Essex and Hampshire regions and the Isle of Wight. It appears that Marty's line of Cheeks came to America from Essex in the late 1600s and settled first in Rappahannock, Virginia. Following the Revolution, the Cheeks were living in South Carolina and then moved to Georgia soon afterwards.

The above photo is from the cemetery at Carroll's United Methodist Church in Carnesville GA. I am intrigued that the grave markers for Marty's Revolutionary War ancestor, William Cheek, and his family are fairly new. Will attempt to find out who had these stones placed.

[Above and Below: Historic markers for Carroll's United Methodist Church.]

This second historic marker at Carroll's Church has piqued my interest, because it names as one of the church's founders a person named L D Prickett. As reported in a blog post from 2017, Context in Historic Sites and Old Books--Frontier Life Along the Monongahela River, I am a descendant of Captain Jacob Prickett of Virginia, so I must research L D Prickett's identity to see if he is connected to my line of Pricketts!

In the photo above, Marty is standing in the old section of Laurel Grove Baptist Church Cemetery in Cornelia GA. In the foreground on the right are the tombstones of his great-great grandparents, Preston and Martha Cheek.

On our way to visit my sister Denise and brother-in-law Frank in Arkansas, we spent a night in Tupelo MS and explored Elvis Presley Birthplace Park, where we took photos in front of Elvis's boyhood home and the Assembly of God church where he first became interested in music.

After an overnight at the home of Denise and Frank, just west of Little Rock, we picked up I-40 and headed back toward California. We had a Plan-B route in mind in case we ran into a snow storm, but the only snow we saw was a bit on the ground in Flagstaff AZ and on the distant Sierra mountains as we got closer to home.

While it was my turn to drive, Marty took a bunch of photos of southwestern scenery. This one, taken near the AZ-CA border, is my favorite.

Interstate 40 ends in Barstow CA, where my father and youngest sister Jessica live, so we were able to spend an hour or so checking in with Dad on New Year's Day, before heading the rest of the way home. Dad is still feisty at 87 and seems to have done well during the pandemic. He has a few close friends, and Jessica, to keep an eye on him.

As stated in my previous post, we have been very fortunate during all the pandemic madness. Marty's stagecraft union has had very little work to offer, but Marty has managed to stay a bit over-employed designing video-editing workstations for Netflix.

My genealogy work has been hampered by lack of access to libraries and physical archives, so I have spent a lot more time practicing piano, writing music, reading, knitting, crocheting, cooking, and housework. Besides the gift of having Marty around, I have been able to sing frequently with our church choir for live-streamed services and a few funerals, so I haven't felt lonely.

As much as we have tried to make lemonade out of this viral lemon, it cannot be over soon enough. I'm sure you all agree!

Stay safe and spread kindness!

Annie

"Our human compassion binds us the one to the other--not in pity or patronizingly, but as human beings who have learnt how to turn our common suffering into hope for the future." -- Nelson Mandela

Another Family Legend Meets DNA!

Hearty August Greetings!

Hope you are all enjoying at least some summer fun and staying virus-free!

Our household has been very fortunate during the pandemic. After about a month with none of his usual movie/TV/stage/trade-show work being available, Marty started to get jobs again, as the demand for live webcasts began to grow. Other opportunities have emerged, too, so Marty has stayed reasonably well-employed. His stagecraft union, I.A.T.S.E., is struggling, and it looks like we'll have to pay a lot more for health coverage for a while, but we consider ourselves very blessed to be neither ill nor broke!

Since the middle of March, most of my time has been spent at home redecorating our home office and puttering with other household needs, cooking a lot more, and of course working on my Genealogy projects. I was supposed to have visited the Midwest in the spring for field research and to meet with cousins and colleagues in Ohio and Kentucky, but that has been put off until at least mid-September.

Diggin' Down Into More DNA

Recent entries in this weblog have recounted my search for the mysterious "Tom Ford" who was supposed to be my 3rd great-grandfather. In that case, I was able to take our family's common knowledge about my illegitimate 2nd great-grandfather's disappearing Dad and attach some DNA evidence to his identity. This month, I encountered a scenario that took research the other direction.

It is a good idea to take periodic peeks into our DNA matches, in search of new developments. Recently I was doing just that, when I encountered a close match that mystified me. Most 2nd- and 3rd-cousin matches are easy for me to place in our tree, especially if the matching person has a few grandparents listed as a guide. That didn't work for this cousin. GH, as I will call him, did kindly leave a bit of family tree for me to peruse, but I puzzled with it for a few hours, until one of the names in his tree reminded me of a story Aunt Beverly, my father's sister, has told me. 

[Numbers in parentheses refer to source references at the end of this blog post.]

The (Sort-Of) Lost Uncle

My great-uncle William O'Brien (an elder brother of my paternal grandmother, Mary Jane O'Brien) had served about three years in the British Army during the Great War (WW1) and had been wounded a few times, when the day came that he decided to stop participating in the war. Uncle William acted upon that decision, deserted His Majesty's Army, and assumed the name Sidney Russell.

The family story has included speculation about whether Uncle William switched "dog tags" with a deceased comrade and assumed his name, but that part of the tale is probably apocryphal. 

All we know for sure is that Uncle William took this new name and ended up in the region of Buckinghamshire, England, where he had a relationship with a young lady named Beatrice Billingham. In 1919, the couple married in Buckinghamshire, and their daughter Margaret was born in Birmingham (1,2,3). 

   www.mirror.co.uk    

Post-War Exodus: UK to US

The family of my grandmother, Mary Jane "Jenny" O'Brien, was from Manchester, England. Grandma Jenny's parents, John and Mary Jane, and all but one of their nine children, had been gradually emigrating to the U.S., with her eldest brother John already living in Minneapolis by the time Jenny, her parents, and her two sisters arrived in the U.S. in 1920. Uncle John's home was their first American residence (4). 

Uncle William--now Sidney Russell--emigrated to the U.S. with his wife and daughter, as soon as Margaret was old enough to travel, in 1921 (4). Uncle William/Sidney went on to Minneapolis with his wife and daughter, following their arrival in Philadelphia. His father John O'Brien was already living in Minneapolis. On their ship's passenger list, Uncle William/Sidney named his Minneapolis contact as his father, John "Russell" (5). 

How much contact William/Sidney had with his parents in Minneapolis is not known, but it appears that he wanted to make sure his family knew where he was, and that he and his family were okay. Uncle William/Sidney and Aunt Beatrice stayed in Minneapolis long enough to have a son there in 1923, named Gerald William (6). In 1925, they were living in Illinois and had a third child, Barbara (7).

The Los Angeles Convergence

Early in the 1920s, the O'Brien family abandoned the frigid climate of Minneapolis and moved to Los Angeles. In 1924, Grandma Jenny married my grandfather, John Schaack, in Los Angeles (8). Before the decade was over, the Russell family made their way to L.A., as well.

In 1928, Great-Grandma Mary Jane O'Brien died of breast cancer at age 60. According to the death certificate, she died in her home, 938 East 111th Drive in Los Angeles (9). It is in this same house that her unmarried children Edward and Margaret are shown to be living, in the 1930 Census (10).

For the first couple of decades from the time they settled in the Los Angeles area, members of the O'Brien family lived only short distances from each other. By 1930, Sidney Russell's household was living in the same neighborhood. A perusal of the 1930 addresses of the O'Brien and Russell family members is easily accomplished using Google Maps, since the layout of most of the City of Los Angeles has changed little in the last 100 years. 

Google Map showing the distance between the home of Sidney Russell (315 E 110th)

and Edward and Margaret O'Brien (938 E 111th) in 1930.

The 1930 Federal Census has the family of Sidney Russell living at 315 E 110th Street in Los Angeles, a 1-mile drive from the home in which his mother had died two years before, and where his brother and sister were still living (11).

Google Map showing the distance between the home of Sidney Russell (315 E 110th)

and James O'Brien (9225 S Figueroa) in 1930.

Google Map showing the distance between the home of Sidney Russell (315 E 110th) 

and John and Mary Jane "Jenny" Schaack (914 E 88th) in 1930.

Sidney's home was a 1.9-mile drive from his brother James's place at 9225 South Figueroa, and a 2.5-mile drive from the home of his sister Jenny and her husband John at 914 East 88th Street, according to the 1930 Census (12,13).

Google Map showing the distance between the home of Sidney Russell (230 E 105th)

and Edward and Maude O'Brien (938 E 111th) in 1940.

Google Map showing the distance between the home of Sidney Russell (230 E 105th)

and John and Jenny Schaack (1024 E 107th) in 1940.

The 1940 Federal Census showed the households of Edward O'Brien, John Schaack, and Sidney Russell still residing very close to each other. Sidney's sister Jenny and her husband had moved and were now living less than a mile's drive from Sidney's new residence. Edward still lived in the same house on East 111th Drive, with his wife Maude (14,15,16). Other O'Brien siblings had moved away from the immediate neighborhood, although most of them would remain in California for the majority, if not the entirety, of their remaining lives.

Their father John O'Brien has not been located by me in the 1930 or 1940 census records, partly due to his common Irish name making it difficult to distinguish him from many other men. From the accounts of my father and his siblings, their grandfather was a frequent visitor to their Los Angeles home. The elder John O'Brien died in 1944, and his home address is given on the death certificate as 112-1/2 East 29th Street in Los Angeles (17).

It is apparent that Sidney Russell's children were aware that he had taken an alias, as evidenced by information given by his daughter Margaret C. on his death certificate. She claimed that his parents names were James O'Brien and Sarah; but she was a child when her grandmother Mary Jane passed away, and it is likely her contact with the O'Brien family was minimal, such that she would forget that her grandfather's first name was John, not James. On the certificate, his birth date is given as April 11, 1895, and he is shown to have died at his home at 445 South Western Avenue in Los Angeles on April 2, 1957 (18).

Sidney Russell's birth date on his Death Certificate matches the date of birth for William O'Brien in his baptismal record from Saint Matthew Parish in Ardwick, Manchester, England (19).

Bravery, Love, and Sacrifice

Grandma Jenny reported to her children that she would occasionally spot her brother William/Sidney around the neighborhood, but there was apparently a pact between the siblings that they would protect their brother's alias, and his wife and children, by denying their relationship. Aunt Beverly told me our uncle feared the British government would come after him as a military deserter.

Uncle William did honorable service for King and Country for many months, but he must have reached a point of desperation, in which he was willing to risk his life in order to save it. Had he been caught deserting the British Army, he would have been executed. Clearly, William/Sidney was motivated by love for his bride, his children, and the large family in which he was raised.

To Tie A Lost Connection

What does all this have to do with my mysterious cousin match, GH?

From Ancestry.com DNA Matches for Anne Brenneis.

GH showed up in my DNA Matches on Ancestry as a 2nd or 3rd cousin. The tree he provided revealed grandparents that should have easily led me to where he belonged in our tree, since our relationship is so close. After a few of hours trying to find in my tree the names in his tree, I stopped and wondered whether there was an adoption or illegitimacy issue. Finally, it occurred to me to look at our shared matches. It was foolish of me not to have done this sooner, because the shared matches provided the strongest clue!

From Ancestry.com DNA Shared Matches for Anne Brenneis and GH.

The presence of my sisters in our shared matches was expected, but when I noted that my father's siblings Howard and Beverly also matched GH, it hit me that the tree GH provided contained the surname Russell. Of course! Uncle William!

Below is a tree sketch showing how GH and I are 2nd cousins 1x removed, beginning with our most recent common ancestors (my great-grandparents, GH's 2x great-grandparents):

John O'Brien (1868-1944)    --    Mary Jane Pixton (1868-1928) 

Sidney Russell/William O'Brien (1895-1957) -- Beatrice Billingham (1894-1942)

Margaret Russell (1919-?) -- Earl C. (1917-1980)

CC (b 1945) -- RH (1941-1994)

GH

I will endeavor to share this blog post with Sidney Russell's descendants, because they deserve to know the story.

Stay well, everyone, and thanks for sticking with me for this rather long post!

--Annie

SOURCES:

(1) Birth record for Margaret Russell. "England & Wales, Civil Registration Birth Index, 1916-2007," 1919, Q3-Jul-Aug-Sep, R, p 314; database with images, Ancestry.com; image 69 of 71.

(2) Marriage record for Sidney Russell to Billingham in Wycombe. "England & Wales, Civil Registration Marriage Index, 1916-2005," 1919, Q4-Oct-Nov-Dec, R, p 146; database with images, Ancestry.com; image 78 of 81.

(3) Marriage record for Beatrice A Billingham to Russell in Wycombe. "England & Wales, Civil Registration Marriage Index, 1916-2005," 1919, Q4-Oct-Nov-Dec, B, p 103; database with images, Ancestry.com; image 63 of 149.

(4) Listing for passengers John, Mary Jane (wife), Ellen, Mary Jane (daughter), and Margaret O'Brien, sailing from Liverpool June 1920 aboard SS Haverford, ultimate destination Minneapolis MN. "Pennsylvania, Passenger and Crew Lists, 1800-1962," T840 - Philadelphia, 1883-1945, from NARA roll 136; database with images, Ancestry.com; image 477-479 of 683.

(5) Listing for passengers Sidney, Beatrice, and Margaret Russell, sailing from Liverpool 11 May 1921 aboard SS Haverford, ultimate destination Minneapolis MN. "Pennsylvania, Passenger and Crew Lists, 1800-1962," T840 - Philadelphia, 1883-1945, from NARA roll 142; database with images, Ancestry.com; image 1037-1039 of 1124.

(6) Draft card of Gerald William Russell, naming birthplace of Minneapolis MN and father's name Sidney Russell. "U.S. WWII Draft Cards Young Men, 1940-1947," California, Roshko-Saavedra, from NARA RG147, Box 1570; database with images, Ancestry.com; image 1893 of 2096.

(7) Birth record for Barbara Russell, 11 July 1925. "Cook County, Illinois Birth Index, 1916-1935," file number 6029017, Cook County Clerk; database on Ancestry.com.

(8) Marriage of John Schaack and Mary Jane O'Brien, 30 Aug 1924. "California, County Marriages, 1850-1952," Los Angeles County; database with images, FamilySearch.org; FHL film number 5698423, image 1421 of 2523.

(9) Death record for Mary J. O'Brien. "California County Birth and Death Records, 1800-1994," Los Angeles, Los Angeles Co, Death Certificates, 1928; California State Archives, Sacramento; database with images FamilySearch.org: FHL film 5597703, image 308 of 2497.

(10) Household of Edward and Margaret O'Brien. "1930 United States Federal Census," California, Los Angeles, District 560; database with images, Ancestry.com; FHL film number 2339888, image 52 of 83.

(11) Household of Sidney Russell. "1930 United States Federal Census," California, Los Angeles, District 570; database with images, Ancestry.com; FHL film number 2339889, image 42 of 51.

(12) Household of James O'Brien. "1930 United States Federal Census," California, Los Angeles, District 554; database with images, Ancestry.com; FHL film number 2339888, image 21 of 43.

(13) Household of John Schaack. "1930 United States Federal Census," California, Los Angeles, District 535; database with images, Ancestry.com; FHL film number 2339889, image 35 of 65.

(14) Household of Sidney Russell. "United States Census, 1940," California, Los Angeles Co, Los Angeles City, Assembly District 60-1223; database with images, FamilySearch.org; FHL film number 5456510, image 7 of 34.

(15) Household of Edward O'Brien. "United States Census, 1940," California, Los Angeles Co, Los Angeles City, Assembly District 60-1226; database with images, FamilySearch.org; FHL film number 5456510, image 7 of 34.

(16) Household of John Schaack. "United States Census, 1940," California, Los Angeles Co, Inglewood, District 19-331; database with images, FamilySearch.org; FHL film number 5456301, image 25 of 72.

(17) Death record for Jack O'Brien. "California County Birth and Death Records, 1800-1994," Los Angeles, Los Angeles Co, Death Certificates, 1944; California State Archives, Sacramento; database with images FamilySearch.org: FHL film 5599879, image 2161 of 2827.

(18) Death certificate for Sidney Russell. “California, County Birth and Death Records, 1800-1994,” Los Angeles, Los Angeles Co, Death certificates, 1957, no 1450-6650, certificate 6516; database with images, FamilySearch.org, FHL film 5597991, image 2863 of 3032; from California State Archives, Sacramento.

(19) Baptism of William O'Brien. “Manchester, England, Church of England Births and Baptisms, 1813-1915,” Ardwick, St Matthew, 1890 Aug – 1905 Jul, page 94, image 51 of 154; database with images, Ancestry.com; from Anglican Parish Registers, Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives.

Further Ford Family Findings!

Greetings from Shelter-In-Place!

Hope you are all staying safe and well, and are not going too crazy at home!

At this time, I was supposed to be in Ohio and Kentucky conducting field research. With that trip delayed until after libraries reopen, there has been much to keep me busy at home. Marty's usual work is not happening, but he has found other avenues for utilizing his many talents. We are among the fortunate, in the midst of our current viral pandemic.

I have spent a good deal of time hammering at some walls that have plagued our family tree, with some success. Much of that work has been related to a previous post I made to this weblog nearly a year ago, A DNA Breakthrough and Conference News, in which I discussed the quest to uncover the identity of the man named "Tom Ford" that family members have claimed was the father of my 2nd great-grandfather, John Thomas Romans.

To recap, I was able to pinpoint a young man named Thomas Benton Ford who had grown up in the neighborhood of my 3rd great-grandmother, Angelina "Adeline" Romans, and was close to her age. Through further study of this Tom Ford's family, I was fortunate to find two DNA matches who are descendants of Tom's father, Harbin Hawkins Ford, through Tom's half-sister. I am currently writing an official genealogical proof for this research and will announce on this blog when it is published.

Originally, as stated in the previous blog post noted above, I doubted that Tom Ford's legitimate son, Edwin Elliott Ford (called Elliott), had had children, because he had been only briefly married to Henrietta Taylor before he died tragically of typhoid at age 24. Turns out, I was incorrect about this!

Thanks to newspapers available through MyHeritage.com, I found young Mr Ford's obituary, which provided not only the news that he had a daughter born December of 1910 (same as my Grandpa C.P., mentioned in previous blog entries), but also named the parents of Elliott's wife, Henrietta. Yay!

The Bourbon News, Paris KY, Volume XXX, Number 4, 13 Jan 1911.

My next task was to follow the movements of Henrietta Taylor Ford and hopefully learn the name of Baby Girl Ford. Further poking through The Bourbon News led me to more info about Henrietta, including the name of her daughter (Lelia Jane Ford, called Jane) and Henrietta's brief marriages to Joseph Gay Mitchell and then Forest Reuben Eyer, with whom she and her daughter were living in Lee IA on the 1920 Federal Census. 

Henrietta stayed married to Mr Eyer for some years and still resided with him in Kansas City MO on the 1930 Census, but Jane was no longer in their household, leading me to believe that she may have married. Henrietta's fourth husband appears to have been Charles Hunter Dishman, whose obituary from 1968 states that she was still his wife at the time of his death. At this time, I have no further vital information about Henrietta.

Jane Ford is found in the 1930 Census to be the wife of Bradford Preston Young and living in Pittsburgh PA. In the 1940 Census, the two were still married with a son. This marriage did not last, however. Mr Young remarried in 1961, lived his final years in Arizona, and is buried with his 2nd wife Norma, who died in 1982.

FindAGrave.com, memorial #157339425.

There are as yet no signs that Jane married again. I am still in search of further records for her. She lived into her 90s and is buried in Kansas, with her maiden name on the grave marker.

FindAGrave.com, memorial #75762562, photo by Jaunice Hess.

--Annie

"If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten we belong to each other."--Mother Teresa

Remembering Grandpa C.P. On Birthday 109.

Hope you all have been having wonderful Holidays! 

In addition to New Year's Day, we have Old-Calendar Christmas (aka Russian Christmas) coming up on January 7th, which we prefer to call Nativity of the Lord. Eastern Orthodox festivities associated with Nativity are full of old-world, joyful solemnity that is exquisitely beautiful, and yet reflects the poverty of spirit of Christ and his earthly family, as well as the countless generations of poor people over the centuries who have been touched by the Grace and Hope of Christmas. 

Marty and I are very casual about Western, Gregorian-Calendar Christmas on December 25th. Marty has fun wearing a Santa hat and lets his white beard get fluffy, and we like spending time with family, but we don't party or shop very much. The Brenneis family has a tradition of making ravioli. I usually bake pumpkin pies for the family and dairy-free breads (cranberry-orange, zucchini-walnut, banana, and pumpkin) for our home. I make batches of Martha Stewart's recipe for cranberry sauce with cognac. Also try to sneak some fish dishes into the family gatherings.

Speaking of fish, the main subject of this article was an avid fisherman. The day that I am writing this (December 28th) is the birthday of my maternal grandfather, Clarence Everett Pryne, known by friends and family as C.P.. He was born 109 years ago, in Eagle Township, Brown County, Ohio. He passed away in 1985, when I was 24, and I'm grateful for all the years of contact with him. The older I get, the more I identify with Grandpa C.P. In my opinion, I've always resembled him, both physically and in personality, more than any other relative. In a previous post from 2017, Mom's Home Town, and C-SPAN for Genealogy, I related some of my favorite memories of Grandpa C.P.

Here is a picture of Grandpa when he was about 3-1/2 years old. Grandpa's brother, Aaron, had died earlier that year of TB at age 6, so it had to have been a melancholy time in their home. He's dressed so oddly here and could easily be mistaken for a little girl, especially with the bow in his hair. Wish I knew the name of the dog.

Speaking of Grandpa being mistaken for a girl, here I am at age 5, already looking a lot like C.P.!

These days, I look a lot more like his mother, Great-Grandma Lou.

Even in her 50s, she had a mischievous look, didn't she?

Grandpa C.P. was a very dapper, yet fun-loving guy. Here we see him in the late 1930s, standing behind Grandma Dorothy and my mother, Bonnie.

This is a nice picture of C.P.(L) standing near a bright, shiny car with his wife's youngest brother, Elmer. We called Uncle Elmer "Whitey," because he was the only sibling in his family with blond hair.

Here are Grandma and Grandpa playing on the beach, probably shortly after they moved to California in 1951. Love this photo!

Here's a sweet family photo, probably also taken in the early 1950s. Pictured, L-R, are Bonnie (Mom), Grandma Dorothy, Grandpa C.P., and twins Joanie and Jimmy (the only person in this pic still living). Grandpa seems to be having the most fun, once again!

My memory has always associated trout with Grandpa C.P. and Grandma Dorothy (known by the kids as Grandma "Shug," short for "sugar"). They had a hillside get-away in the southern Sierra mountains, near Lake Isabella and the Kern River. Trips to our grandparents's get-away were called "going up the hill." Both nearby bodies of water were great places to fish, and my grandparents loved to go fishing! They had their favorite spots along the Kern, but they were not averse to taking a boat out on the lake to fish. Most of my memories fishing with them were on the river, and river trout has remained my favorite fish to this day.

C.P. "up the hill" in front of their mobile home in 1968,

having laid out the day's catch, by size.

In the early 1970s, Grandpa C.P. and Grandma Dorothy both retired from General Dynamics. They sold their place "up the hill" and bought a place in the Kern River Valley, right next door to Dorothy's older sister Elva. Here's a photo from the valley property, with C.P. apparently taking a rest after sawing some lumber for Aunt Elva, who stands behind him.

Aunt Elva was always one of my favorites, because she was another musician in the family and was always very welcoming to us. Elva had played piano for silent films when she was a teenager and also loved to sing in church. My mother's sister Joanie was a gospel singer, too. Mom could sing, but she was more of a music fan than a performer. Mom loved dance music, like big-band, rock, and country, but she had a set of classical music records and played them quite a bit. Mom got me started listening to Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms, and Tchaikovsky, and also let me have many years of music lessons. Mom didn't like Elva's piano playing, because she thought Elva "banged" on the keys. I liked playing Aunt Elva's piano because some of its notes were way off kilter, and I would make up tunes based on the worst of Elva's piano keys.

Sadly, Grandma Dorothy died in early 1975, just a few short years after they bought the valley homestead. She was only 58 years old (my age now), when she had a sudden, massive cerebral hemorrhage. She always seemed to be such a tough lady to all of us, but she wasn't taking her blood pressure medicine properly. Losing her was awful, just awful, and Grandpa C.P. spent the remaining 10 years of his life feeling rather lost.

Not long before Grandpa passed away, I talked with him on the phone for a while. I was finishing up four years of active Navy duty in Charleston, South Carolina (a lovely place!). He was not doing well physically and was living with my mother. We usually talked about what was in the news or on TV, as well as family stuff. During that call, Grandpa and I had our final conversation. The last thing I told him was that I loved him. When news of his passing reached me in Charleston, I was so grateful for the way our last conversation ended. 

We all need to end our conversations with expressions of love, because we may not speak to that person again.

A very blessed New Year to all!

Annie

"My grandfather once told me that there were two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was much less competition." -- Indira Gandhi

IGGC 2019...An Inspired Gathering Of Cousins!

Guten Tag, Freunde!

Earlier this month, from the 15th to 17th of June, the second International German Genealogy Conference (IGGC) of the International German Genealogy Partnership (IGGP) was held at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Sacramento. This post is my review of the conference, but my viewpoint cannot be considered completely unbiased, because I am a board member of the host organization, the Sacramento German Genealogy Society (SGGS). The high regard in which I hold the organizers of this IGGC colors my review. I had helped a little with publicity for the conference but was not directly involved with its planning.

First, I must commend the organizers for their choice of venue. The location of the Hyatt Regency was ideal for the conference. The hotel is right across the street from the beautiful Capitol Park that surrounds our impressive State Capitol Building. A number of fascinating museums, Old Sacramento, the California State Library and Archives, the Historic City Cemetery, and several other historic sites are a short distance away from the Hyatt, accessible by light rail or even on foot.

The California State Capitol Building (Photo by California State Parks)

The Friday before the conference, June 14th, there were tours organized to some of the local attractions. I had the joy of escorting a group out to the Historic City Cemetery for a tour. The weather that day was perfect for such an excursion, and we genealogists are well known to be enthusiastic about cemeteries, so we all had a lovely time there.

Sacramento Historic City Cemetery (Photo by CSvBibra, Wikimedia Commons)

Friday evening, there was a Biergarten reception at the Sacramento Turn Verein, a beautiful German cultural center that is a real treasure with a rich history (read about it here: http://sacramentoturnverein.com/history/). It includes a library and several social areas complete with beer taps. The regular activities at the Sacramento Turn Verein include festivals, German language lessons, sports clubs, and music and dance groups. I did not attend the Biergarten, but I have visited the Turn Verein on many happy occasions. Musicians from the Turn Verein provided wonderful entertainment throughout the conference, including the skillful blowing of an Alpine horn at the opening session!

Speaking of the opening Plenary Session, at 7:45 a.m. on Saturday the 15th, the IGGC wasted no time drawing us into the rich German pioneer history of California, with visits from living-history figures that included Civil War soldiers, frontiers-men and -women, and the proprietor of that famous fort, John Sutter, himself!

All three days of the IGGC, there were wonderful keynote speakers over lunch, and I had made reservations to be at all three. Saturday's keynote was presented by IGGP and SGGS President Ingeborg Carpenter, a native of Germany with first-hand knowledge of the American immigrant experience. Her living-history characterization, in full costume, of a German woman in San Francisco and Sacramento during the Gold Rush was compelling and beautiful. It was my favorite of the three keynotes, which is saying something, because the other two speakers were the wonderful and immensely knowledgeable Michael Lacopo and Roger Minert! Dr Lacopo spoke about push and pull factors that brought Germans to America during the 18th Century, and Dr Minert offered details about German marriage and courtship practices that covered three centuries. So glad I attended them all!

A quick review of the food served by the Hyatt: The salads were excellent (fortunately) and so were the desserts (unfortunately). The house wines were good, and the cheese/cracker/fruit hors d'oeuvres for a reception were very nice. I was underwhelmed by the entrees, except for one that was a chicken Caesar salad. At the banquet Sunday night, the entree would have been fine, except everything on the plate was covered by a glaze that made me gag. I scraped off the glaze and ate some of it (the combination of German and Scottish blood in me detests waste). It would have been good without the glaze. Sauces on the side, people!

The speaker for the banquet was marvelous! I don't have her name written down, but I recall that she is an anthropologist who specializes in historic dress and has participated in living history at Sutter's Fort. She made her presentation in frontier-era dress that featured bloomers and stays (like a corset), discussing reasons and methods for wearing her outfit. It was very entertaining as well as fascinating!

It was rather difficult to choose sessions to attend during the day, because there were so many terrific choices! I decided to go hear mostly speakers I had not heard before, and of those my favorites were Wolfgang Grams (on German American migration), Ben Hollister (on German one-name studies), Nathan Machula (on researching provinces in the East), and Ute Brandenburg (on the travel companions of immigrants). I did attend presentations by familiar speakers, though, and I especially liked James Beidler's talk on German-Language newspapers (his new book on newspapers is a must-read!) and Bill Cole's session on storytelling and writing techniques.

This IGGC was of moderate size, but the hallways and small rooms that housed the society and vendor tables were not overly crowded. Of the vendors, I had particularly interesting chats with Michael Provard of FamilySearch and Mike Mansfield of MyHeritage, both of whom gave highly informative talks about their websites that I'm glad to have attended.

The first IGGC, which I did not attend, was held in 2017 in Minnesota. Every attendee from whom I heard descriptions of that conference stated that there had been a sense of "family reunion" there. At this second IGGC, I had a strong feeling of being surrounded by cousins, too. More than at any other genealogy conference I have attended, the mood was warmly collaborative and not a bit competitive. Not once did I feel as though I needed to get away from the people. I was drawn to them, and we all had beautiful experiences and exciting ideas to share. For me, the 2019 IGGC in Sacramento was a meaningful and memorable experience filled with learning and fun. 

When it was announced that the 2021 IGGC is slated to take place in Cincinnati, my excitement could not be contained. The breeding grounds of my mother's family, including the German line, from pioneer days forward, have surrounded the city of Cincinnati. I have been going back there to visit cousins and do research in the Fall for the last couple of years and plan to go back there this year, too. It will be great to be there with even more German cousins from around the world in 2021. Hope I will be able to convince a few of them to join me at Skyline for a plate of Cincinnati chili over spaghetti (what my mother called "chili-skett")!

A plate of Cincinnati-style chili. Looks good, doesn't it?

(Photo by Valereee, Wikimedia Commons)

Here's to many beautiful Summer hikes, without wildfires!

--Annie

"Man reist nicht, um anzukommen, sondern um zu reisen (You do not travel to arrive, but to travel)." -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A DNA Breakthrough and Conference News

Welcome back, Readers!

Summer has not yet arrived on the calendar, but the heat wave we are experiencing in the Bay Area has aided my transition into full Summer mode! With another Midwestern road trip slated for September, lots of on-site research planning is happening at my desk. This year, a perk has been added to my back-east wanderings: my sister Denise and her husband Frank have bought a house in Arkansas! I already miss their former mountain home-base in Bishop, California, but now I have a great place for extended pit-stops on journeys to Cincinnati and beyond, with the added bonus of spending time with my wonderful sister and brother-in-law!

Frank preparing to give Denise "bunny ears." 

They are wonderfully insane. Can't wait to see them again!

Dismantling Some Masonry
One of the proverbial "brick walls" with which I have been contending in recent years involves my 2nd great-grandfather, John Thomas "JT" Romans. According to family legend, in 1858 JT's mother Angelina Romans had a late-teenage tryst with a boy named Tom Ford and found herself to be with child. Soon after his roll in the hay with Angelina, Tom Ford left town, supposedly to visit Europe.

The Romans family had a farm in Owen County, Kentucky at the time, and they had a good many neighbors with the surname Ford, who appear to have been rather well-to-do for the area, based on documents and county histories I have found. Perusal of the Federal Census of 1850 for Owen County showed one person named Thomas Ford, the son of Harbin (misspelled "Harlin") and Anna (spelled "Ann") Ford. One of the Owen County histories mentioned that young Tom, his mother Anna, and his sister Laura moved to Frankfort soon after the 1853 death of Harbin Ford so that Tom could attend a private school there. 

There continued to be a heavy Ford-family presence in Owen County following the relocation of Harbin's household, and those family ties are the basis for my suspicion that the widow and children of Harbin Ford made a number of 20-mile trips back to Owen County in the years following their move to Frankfort. It is possible that one of those visits provided the opportunity for this Tom Ford to get together with Angelina.

Due diligence required that I search for another possible baby-daddy named Tom Ford, so I dissected 1850 and 1860 census records for Owen County looking for clues that could lead to another Tom Ford but found no one else by that name. A search of census records for surrounding counties yielded only our original suspect living in Frankfort with his mother and sister in 1860.

Other neighbors of the Romans clan included the Martin family. They had a son named Elisha who must have been a generous young man, because he married Angelina in 1860, less than a year following the birth of little JT. In the 1860 census, the household of Elisha and Angelina Martin included JT, with the assumed surname of Martin. It may have been Elisha's intent to adopt and help raise JT. I've noticed that distantly related genealogy hobbyists who have included our Romans family in their trees have assumed that Elisha Martin was JT's biological father, but those of us who are JT's direct descendants have not believed that to be the case. 

Thomas B. Ford, left (Register of the KY State Historical Society, vol. 41, p 11)

and John Thomas Romans, right (from a family photo dated 1909)

In 1863, with JT only four years old, Angelina died and Elisha Martin volunteered for the Confederate Army. JT was left in the care of his grandparents, Shelton and Malinda Romans, in whose household he appeared on the 1870 census. When Elisha Martin returned from the war, he married Angelina's younger sister Zilpha and had a number of children with her, including a daughter they named Adeline, which had been Angelina's nickname.

JT's Romans grandparents had passed away by 1880. JT does not appear in the households of either Elisha and Zilpha Martin or Tom Ford in the 1880 census. 
In 1882, JT married his first wife Corinthia in a neighboring county. Corinthia died in 1888 without any surviving children that I have located. In 1889 he married my 2nd great-grandmother, Amanda Petty. 

JT and Amanda remained in northern Kentucky and raised a large family, including my great-grandmother Daisy. Census records state he worked as a farm laborer then later as a carpenter. JT fell victim to a common scourge of his time, tuberculosis, and died in a TB asylum in Texas at age 62. The informant for his death certificate was either Mrs. or Miss Anna Romans (wife Amanda's name might have been mistakenly written as "Anna," and he had a daughter named Anna), who evidently gave the name "Tom" as his father's name, which was written on the certificate as "Tom Romans." His mother's name was given as "Adeline Romans," using Angelina's nickname.

Next, I embarked upon a deeper study of our suspected paternal Tom Ford, whose full name was Thomas Benton Ford. Mr. Ford continued to reside in Frankfort following his schooling and became an attorney. He was also a published author of poetry and prose, as was his sister Laura. Because he was a man of some notoriety, I was able to find an article about him and Laura in a 1943 issue of the Register of the Kentucky State Historical Society, as well as mention of him and his family in a book entitled Owen County, Kentucky: History and Families. From these and a few other sources, I have been able to glean quite a bit of fascinating information about Thomas B. Ford, but no hints that he had left behind an illegitimate child in Owen County. 

The search for DNA evidence of paternity was my next step. Our Tom Ford did marry and by this wife had a son named Ellis, who died as a young adult without leaving any known children behind. Laura Ford married late in life and does not appear to have had any children, either. Tom and Laura were Harbin Ford's children by his second wife. Fortunately, Harbin's daughter Elizabeth by his first wife has had a long string of progeny, the lines of which I have traced down well into the 20th century. Ancestry DNA came to the rescue here, yielding two living cousin matches: One a half 5th cousin (male) and the other a half 4th cousin once removed (female), both descendants of Tom's half-sister Elizabeth!

These DNA matches constitute my first concrete piece of evidence that Thomas Benton Ford may be my 3rd great-grandfather. At the very least, it appears I have located the family of the mysterious Tom Ford. Research continues.

Recent L.A. Jamboree and upcoming Sacramento German Conference
A couple of weeks ago, I made one of my customary treks to the Los Angeles area to visit family and sneak in some research at the L.A. Central Library, one of my favorite haunts (see my article about it in the California Genealogical Society blog: The Genealogy Collection at Los Angeles Central Library). My time was limited, but I had to go check out the feted Genealogy Jamboree that was taking place in Burbank. I signed up for their free sessions on Friday morning, which were terrific, and had a chance to peruse the society and merchant booths.

Besides the free Friday sessions, Jamboree has a free mobile app that is very similar to the one that Roots Tech has. Like the Roots Tech app, you can use the Jamboree app to download all of the handouts from Jamboree sessions, whether or not you paid for or attended any of them! It's important to keep in mind that both Roots Tech and Jamboree make the handouts available for personal use only!

This coming weekend is especially exciting for many of us who do German genealogical research, because we will be enjoying the International German Genealogy Conference, which is being held in Sacramento, only a 2-hour drive from home! Of course, I will be writing about it on this very blog!

Annie

"Alles hat ein Ende, nur die Wurst hat zwei (Everything has an end, only the sausage has two)." -- German expression

The Pryne Twins at 80, Kentucky Klips, and More!

Happy Spring, Everyone!

The poppies are popping again out here in California. We had much more rain than usual this year, so we are having what they call a super-bloom season. Loving all the color! Wikipedia has posted this fabulous picture of a righteous coating of poppy-Cheeto-Dust on Walker Canyon in Riverside County (photo by Bluesnote):

Kentucky Klips, Plus!
One of the joys of doing genealogy is finding surprises in newspaper archives, and I've mined some real gems in recent weeks. The most important clippings found in this haul provide essential info regarding the month and year of the marriage of my maternal grandparents, Clarence Pryne and Dorothy Marksberry. My immediate family is not in possession of any documentation of their marriage, but on the 1940 U.S. Census my grandparents stated they were living in the same Covington, KY dwelling in 1935, and their first child--my mother Bonnie--was born in 1937. These facts provided the clue that they were married in 1935 or earlier. Their son, my uncle Jimmy, could not recall the date of their anniversary when I asked him recently, but he remembers seeing a photo of his mother in a wedding dress. Fortunately, now I have more clues!

The clip below is from the newspaper The Kentucky Post on March 28, 1934. It advertises a fundraising event for the local volunteer fire department. In the fourth paragraph of the article, my grandmother Miss Dorothy Marksberry and great-grandmother Mrs. Orin Marksberry (her name was Daisy) are listed as participants. The fifth paragraph states that my grandfather Clarence Pryne would be performing a specialty dance (he was known to be good at soft-shoe tap). From this clip, not only do I learn that my grandparents were not yet married in March of 1934, I also learn that my great-grandmother was probably a member of the Women's Auxiliary of the Elsmere Volunteer Fire Department! My great-grandfather and great-uncles may have been volunteer firemen, too.

This next clip from The Kentucky Post dated April 6, 1934 provides the society-column announcement about the Ladies' Auxiliary show in its second through fourth paragraphs. The article states that the show would take place Friday (April 6th was a Friday in 1934) at Lloyd High School, where my grandmother was likely a student. It is distasteful to read in the third paragraph that some men performed in black-face (hopefully Grandpa was not one of them!). Clarence Pryne (Grandpa C.P., as we knew him) is mentioned again as a dancer.

The most exciting find from my search of The Kentucky Post is this marriage announcement dated July 5, 1934. My grandparents are listed third. There is no exact date or place mentioned except for Kenton County, and I've yet to find an official record of their marriage, but my search has been narrowed considerably!

Nearly five years into their marriage, on April 21, 1939, Dorothy would give birth to boy-girl twins, James and Joan. Twins run on both sides of my grandfather's family--his mother Lorena Segondollar had a twin brother, and his father James Prine had a set of boy-girl twins by his second wife Madge. On April 22, 1939, The Kentucky Post printed a photograph of three nurses from St Elizabeth's Hospital holding three sets of twins that had been born there that week. The nurse on the right was holding the Pryne twins.

When I showed this picture to Uncle Jimmy last week, he did not remember seeing it before, and he also claimed he could not tell which baby was him, except to say that he was "the ugly one" (ha-ha!).

As you can tell from the date, Uncle Jimmy just celebrated his 80th birthday, but every year he mourns the loss of his twin Joanie, who died in 2001. Aunt Joanie and I bonded over music, as she was a gifted Gospel singer.

Here's another clip from The Kentucky Post dated June 10, 1950 in which there is a report about a picnic held at the home of my great-grandparents, Orin and Daisy Marksberry. The out-of-town visitors mentioned included Great-Grandma Daisy's brother Dr. Carl Romans and his family, who had come from Colorado. Grandma Dorothy's brother Ernest Marksberry, who was visiting with his wife Margaret, had moved in recent years from Kentucky to El Monte, California. My grandparents, mother Bonnie, and her twin siblings James and Joan (listed in the article after Ernest and wife) moved to California in 1951. Other members of the Marksberry family also would soon make the move to California, including sister Elva Riley and brother Elmer along with their families. Finally, Orin and Daisy would relocate to California in about 1957.

The article below is from the Riverside Independent Enterprise newspaper in California, dated September 22, 1960, and announces the celebration of Orin and Daisy Marksberry's 50th wedding anniversary. The article mistakenly lists the place of their wedding as "Tudlow," when in fact it was Ludlow, Kentucky. In the third paragraph are mentioned Mr. and Mrs. Clarence Pryne, Mr. and Mrs. Richard Schaack (my parents), and Mr. and Mrs. Roy McCullough (Aunt Joan and her husband), stating that they all lived in El Monte (probably not accurate, as I believe my parents lived in San Gabriel in 1960). By the way, Mom was 4 months pregnant with me at this time, and Joanie was 3 months along with my cousin Robin. In the second column of the article, Uncle Jimmy (Airman 2nd Class James Pryne) is noted to have been stationed in Germany with the Air Force. In the third column is listed Mrs. Lou Fugate, my grandfather's mother (the former Lorena Segondollar, now widow of George Fugate), who was living with my grandparents in El Monte.

Speaking of El Monte, California, that suburb of Los Angeles was to become quite an important location for our family. For a number of years, the family of Clarence and Dorothy Pryne resided there, and their children attended El Monte High School. My parents were married in Mom's parents' house in El Monte. My sister Denise and I were born in El Monte Community Hospital. We also lived in South El Monte for about 10 years. 

Any of you who remember the old Dr. Demento radio show may recall the following lovely (a-hem!) ditty about El Monte, performed by a raucous garage band called The Rubber Band and their leader Llyn Foulkes (you can hear it for yourself at this link: "El Monte" on Dr. Demento).

I live in a town in East L.A., it's not very big

but it's got lots of stores with stereos and things like that you dig.

I have a nice apartment, it's got a pretty good view.

I can see three service stations and the Long Beach Freeway, too.

Chorus:

El Monte, El Monte, there ain't no other place like it.

El Monte, El Monte, I tell ya' it ain't worth (honking sounds)!

We got a drive-in movie, it has three shows every night.

There's one playin' now with John Wayne, it's really out-a sight.

My wife likes all the drug stores, they have everything.

That's where I bought my outboard motor and her wedding ring.

(chorus)

Now if you come to East L.A., be sure to give me a call.

There's a couple of bowling alleys, we'll really have a ball.

We're just about a mile from Rosemead and a little bit north of Whittier,

and you might like the City of Industry but our town's a whole lot prettier.

(chorus)

James, Joan, and Bonnie Pryne about 1945

probably in Olive Branch, Mississippi

(I'll check with Jimmy regarding the location)

Christ Is Risen!!! He Is Risen Indeed!!! Alleluia!!!

A Joyous Easter Season to you all!

--Annie

"Don't criticize or judge other people--regard everyone else as an angel, justify their mistakes and weaknesses, and condemn only yourself as the worst sinner. This is step one in any kind of spiritual life." -- Blessed Seraphim of Platina