All My Ancestors

You just never know when you start trolling through newspapers.

With work in the library and client work I haven’t had much time for looking around my own lines, but this week I came down with a sinus infection that kept me in bed but not off the net. I’ve written several times about my “not very well-liked” 2nd great grandfather John Osborne who died in 1865 in Humboldt, Gibson County, Tennessee. Shortly after his death, some of the older sons moved to Texas, and my great-grandmother and the younger children moved as well.

The two youngest children in this family were daughters–Alice Massey Osborne and Lillie Lenoir Osborne. (I have this theory that the middle names for these girls came from the surnames of their older sisters’ husbands. The older sisters were from John Osborne’s first marriage to Violet Cathey–Martha Jane married Henry Carter Massey and sister Harriet married Walter Franklin Lenoir and these families remained in Tennessee after the war when most of the rest of the family went to Texas.)

Despite not being able to locate many of this group in Texas on the 1870 census, I do have a record for my great-grandparents marrying in 1871 in Grimes County, Texas.

But back to the girls.

Alice and Lillie were about 9 and 6 when their father died. Their older brother Charles W. was my great-grandfather who married Gertrude Susanna Mobley in 1871 in Texas. Alice married Alexander Franklin Brigance in 1874, also in Grimes County, Texas, and Lillie married Thaddeus S. Clark in Falls County in 1885. In 1880, Lillie is not living with her mother and brother John Morrison in Grimes County–I believe she is in Bell County boarding in the household of John and Clarinda Regans, working as a teacher. Both of her older brothers George C., now widowed, and Charles W. are also living with their families in this county.

I was prowling through various online sources such as Find A Grave, Texas death and marriage records at FamilySearch, and a couple of newspaper databases, tracking descendants of these two women. One of Lillie’s daughters lived in Waco and fortunately, the Waco newspaper is available through my NewspaperArchive subscription. I determined that Lillie’s daughter Rosa married William E. Thrash, and, based on several newspaper articles that their daughter Adelaide married a man named Lee.

Then this article appeared–

Pampa Daily News 8 Dec 1946

What are the chances of two people in the same family being involved in major hotel fires in the same year?

Further, I actually found this article in several newspapers, including the Dallas paper. But this one from the Pampa, Texas, paper is particularly interesting since this is where my great-grandfather Charles W. Osborne and his family “landed.” He died there in 1926 but several of his descendants still reside there–it’s the site of our family reunion every two years. I wonder if any of the family recognized the names–I’d certainly never heard the story through the usual family grapevines.

Neither of these hotel fires was familiar to me–so, of course, this sent me off on a whole other chase. At which time I found this picture! Again, it appeared in several newspapers since it went out on the AP wire but this one is from the Cullman, Alabama newspaper.

This is Langdon Thrash in an Atlanta hospital in December 1946, being ministered to by nurse Mrs. Gloria Horton. As the story indicates, he survived the Winecoff Hotel fire by putting his head out the window and closing the window so he couldn’t withdraw it. The firemen found him unconscious. All of his possessions with him were destroyed but his life was spared, unlike 119 of the other residents. The article on the Winecoff Hotel in Wikipedia indicates it remains the deadliest hotel fire in US history.

There were no such photos of Adelaide’s son Billy, but there were several stories about the fire at the LaSalle Hotel in Chicago earlier in the year, June 5. Many of the stories about the Winecoff Hotel fire indicated that if the lessons of the LaSalle fire had been learned, many of the fatalities of the Atlanta fire could have been prevented. Neither building had sprinklers nor effective fire escapes–building codes were put into place soon thereafter as a result of these tragedies. Billy evidently escaped with no severe injuries and lived long and well if he turned out to be who I think he was.

That’s for another post.

Bottom line, newspapers are wonderful resources and we are fortunate to live in the day of digital availability of SOME of the stories published in them about our ancestors’ lives.

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Yesterday I went to Guthrie to speak to the Logan County Genealogical Society.

Guthrie was the first capital of Oklahoma and it remains a historical place–it is a National Historic Landmark. I always enjoy visiting there–the people are warm and the history is unavoidable. The Society meets in the Oklahoma Territorial Museum.

The museum is attached to the first Carnegie library built in Oklahoma.

The library interior has been beautifully restored, with the tile surrounds on the fireplaces showing my favorite color.

There were displays of modern-day constructions made in the recent workshop held at the Museum.

In addition, there is a display of Nicole Moen‘s wearable ceramic corsets. Fascinating.

This one is called “Autumn Wedding”

. . . I forgot the official name of this one but it looks appropriate for women out here on the frontier, don’t you think?

and “Lily Pond” which is being raffled as a fund raiser for YWCA Battered Womens program. (have I mentioned I like green?) This was beautiful.

There was even information about men who wore corsets, which, according to this display, is the origin of the word “dandy.”

I felt myself breathe a little more deeply when I got to this “Bloomer garment” . . . a welcome relief, no doubt, to women in the early part of the 20th century when looser garments were finally accepted.

And if you want to support the Museum efforts, you can make a donation and perhaps win this wonderful quilted wallhanging made by the volunteers. . .

I hope I get another invitation to talk to this Society again–it’s a wonderful trip.

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The Oklahoma Department of Libraries has put the card file they hold for the Oklahoma Confederate Pensions online.

You can browse or search–all 7885 of them.

Here’s the card for my 2nd great-grandfather

and the reverse–

I got a copy of his pension packet a few years ago at the Oklahoma Historical Society.  And my grandmother, James Anderton’s granddaughter, had told me that he’d gone back to Alabama and died there.  Despite the state of Alabama telling me they couldn’t find his death record, I did find it later and he died in 1918.  And then a few years later, one of my friends found his grave for me.  He’s buried in Cochran Cemetery in Marshall County, Alabama.

The ODL website also includes the index for the Confederate Pensions, but looking through the cards that were typed in the early part of the 20th century shortly after the legislation passed 25 February 1915, gives me a better sense of the process.  Something about seeing the work of those old manual typewriters, with a red ribbon used occasionally, and the other various stamps–

Great-great grandfather James applied for his pension 3 short months after the passage of the legislation.  He lived out in the panhandle of Oklahoma, which, even today, can feel isolated from what goes on in the state capital 200 miles away.  I wonder how he got the word?

His wife of 45 years had died in April.  My grandmother told me that her grandmother Anderton had really wanted to go back home to Alabama in her later years.  They had come out to Oklahoma by 1904 when their son, my great-grandfather, married in Mangum, Greer County, Oklahoma Territory.  A few years later they all moved on out to the panhandle and received homestead land.  Three short months after he applied, his pension application was approved.  He apparently used the money to finance his return home.  His sons who had come west stayed in Oklahoma, with the exception of one whose wife had died.  The cemetery in which he is buried include Kirklands to whom I believe he is related.  His youngest daughter had married a Kirkland, and though I don’t see her name there, she may have buried her father where her husband’s family had property.

So it’s another Oklahoma resource online. It was initially fascinating to me to find that my Alabama grandfather’s military pension was available in Oklahoma. But the soldiers who had served as Confederates received pensions much later than did the Union soldiers, and then from the states in which they were living at the time rather than from the states from which they served.

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Today I had a customer I really really wanted to help.

He wanted to find his mother.  That’s the first thing he told me in response to my “Can I help you?”  When I thought he probably meant that he’d been adopted, I was right.  He knew her name and he knew where he was born and the state agency through which he had been adopted.

After my interaction with him, I wondered if at some level, he really wanted to know.

I asked him if he’d tried to get a court order to open his files.  He said he had known a judge who was going to help him but she died.

I told him I knew a person in the city where he was born who did this sort of work as a gift to adoptees.  He didn’t ask her name or for her contact information.

I asked him if he’d registered with the agency for their mutual consent service.  No.

He knew that his birth mother had 3 sisters and that she had been born about 1930.  In the 1930 census, I found at least 3 families with daughters that were possibilities in the city where he was born.  He didn’t look at them but told me he’d tracked one family by that name back several generations.  (I didn’t say it, but wasn’t he going the wrong direction?)

From an online index, I printed out a list of persons with the surname he was researching who had died in that city–some of the names matched the 1930 census records.  He went back to the newspaper room to look at obits.  For about 5 minutes.

He said he’d be back and look later as he went out the door.

I’ve helped people find their birth families and birth families find their children.  It’s always a roller-coaster ride.  This gentleman was definitely on the ride and didn’t quite know how to handle it.  I’m almost certain we could have found his mother’s family, but he had to be ready.

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Hubbo and I are taking a vacation.  The criteria is that it has to be someplace cool but not high altitude.

So we’re going to Wisconsin.

And, interestingly enough, in my family of Southerners, I have something genealogical to research in Wisconsin.

A few years ago I found this Tennessee Historical Quarterly with a copy of a water color painting on the cover.

I don’t remember how I found this particular subject, but it includes an article about the 12th Wisconsin Infantry in West Tennessee, authored by Dennis K. McDaniel.  The cover is one of the watercolors of James Gaddis, a member of the 12th, and this particular painting includes, down in the left hand corner, an image of the home and hotel of my great-great-grandfather, John Osborne, in Humboldt, Gibson County, Tennessee.

Alarm at Humboldt

I have contacted the Wisconsin Veterans Museum and the Research Archivist has confirmed that they do indeed have these watercolors.  I didn’t find them in the online catalog, but they have been cataloged, records generated, and the images and records are in line to be uploaded into the catalog of objects.  Some of them are on display in the Civil War gallery and I can make an appointment to look at the original.  I can also order a photographic reproduction I hope arrives in time for my Osborne family reunion early in August.

A few years ago I had opportunity to do some research at the Tennessee State Library and Archives about this time and place.  As with much research about topics during the Civil War, I didn’t find much.  I was able to read on microfilm extant copies of the Soldier’s Budget, a newspaper published by the Twelfth.  I hoped for a mention of the soldiers staying in the hotel, but I didn’t find any mention of my relative.  It did certainly give me a flavor of the place, though.  The soldiers had decided to publish their newspaper when they found the printing press in a chicken coop.  I thought it was interesting to have watercolors and newspapers from this unit stationed in Humboldt–they evidently had enough time for these ventures and I’m glad to have their records.

So I’m looking forward to seeing the watercolor up close and personal.  And to see if there’s any other info on James Gaddis’ time in Humboldt.  And to vacation in a place cooler than Oklahoma.

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One of the early lessons I remember learning in doing genealogy was to be careful about what places are called.  Someone was relating their experience of looking for their family in Yellow Bush, Mississippi.  Of course, the place name turned out to be Yalobusha county, Mississippi.

I thought of that lesson Friday when a friend and I stopped in the Oak Hill Cemetery in Water Valley, Yalobusha County, Mississippi.  I was going to visit the grave of more Mitchell relatives.  I knew they were buried there because I’d found them on Find A Grave.  But somehow that didn’t keep me from wanting to visit them in person.  And having a fellow genealogist along egging me on meant we were destined to find this place.

Mississippi is new research ground for me.  We originally thought we’d go through Jackson and visit the Mississippi Department of Archives and History on Saturday morning.  However, after dropping my car keys down the elevator shaft from the fourth floor, waiting for them to be retrieved, racing to campus in a downpour and finishing a tough course for the week, I just didn’t have the strength to search for the family of my Adaliza Ellis (1824 LA – 1898 TX) in Jackson.  So we decided to visit some of my family’s graves that were close to our route back to Oklahoma City, and then visit the Memphis Central library on Saturday morning so my partner in crime could pull some Tennessee land grants for her family names, which included James Smith!!  (Is it any wonder she has a presentation on tracking people with common names?)

According to the gate, Oak Hill Cemetery was founded in 1816.

In my experience, this is an old cemetery.  And, as might be expected for a cemetery of this age, there were lots of burials. We had a little trouble finding the graves. But using my iPhone to pull up the Find A Grave images, we located them based on the roofs and telephone poles in the background of the images on Find A Grave.

Oak Hill also a very hilly cemetery, with retaining walls and steps to get to some of the family plots.

Here is the step up into the Boyd plot, the target of my search.  I think there’s a worn image on the first, lower step but the name has been re-tooled on the top step.

And, seeing the grave of Mary E. Mitchell Boyd (1818-1893), wife of Robert Louis Boyd (1800-1868, buried in Byhalia, Marshall County), I have questions.

What are the side pieces?  Are they decorative only?  I took a couple of closeups, though not good ones,  and they have designs on them:

There were other graves that had similar “surrounds” and then there were the ones that were ovals–of various sizes–the small ones were very sobering.

Can anyone enlighten me about these types of cemetery markers?  Some of them, particularly the ones for children, had the names and dates incorporated into the ovals:

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Based on a comment from another Mitchell researcher, I went looking for the will of James Mitchell.  He’s the brother of my 4th great-grandfather John Mitchell (1788-1847), my current genealogical focus as I’m writing about his wife in my genealogical proof document for my ProGen 6 class.  I found John’s brother David Reed Mitchell who died in Corsicana, Navarro County, Texas in 1753.  I also found two letters in Andrew Jackson’s presidential papers (Google Books) that David Reed had written to President Jackson regarding some matters of his brother James’ estate.  David refers to James’ children, but until recently, I didn’t know who these children were.  I’m still not certain that these are his only issue, but his will does name two children: his son  John L. Mitchell and Mary Ann Doty, presumably a married daughter.

Last Friday, I checked our library holdings for an index to Alabama wills.  Sure enough, I found Index to Alabama Wills, 1808-1870, indexed and published by the Alabama Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution in 1955.  The entry for James Mitchell who died in Montgomery County provided the book (2) and page number (28), so I called the Probate Judge’s office late Friday, which, by the way, also had the index online at http://pjr.mc-ala.org/weblandrecord.  The clerk was very gracious despite my late call just before a holiday weekend, took my credit card number ($2.00), and today, I received the copy of the will.  It is difficult to read, but here’s what I believe it says: [suggested corrections welcome]

In the name of God.  Amen.

I, James Mitchell of Montgomery County and State of Alabama Considering the uncertainty of this mortal life and being of sound and perfect mind and memory and bless the almighty God for the same do make and publish this my last will and testament in manner and form following that is to say, I give bequeath and devise unto my beloved son and daughter John L. Mitchell and Mary Ann Doty all my land tenements goods chattle debts and effects of any kind or nature ?? whether real or personal lying in this or any other of the United States to be equally divided between them to have and to hold the same unto the said John L. and Mary A., their heirs and assigns forever and for the just and true appreciation of this my lasd will and testament, I do hereby appoint John S. Bailey the executor of this same hereby revoking all former wills by me made.

In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and affixed my seal this sixth day of February in the year of our Lord one thougsand eight hundred and twenty five and in the forty ninth year of the American Independence.

James Mitchell {seal}

?? ?? published and declared by the above named James Mitchell to be his last will and testament in his presents to have ?? unto [inscribed] our names as witness in the presents of the testator:

David/Daniel F/T Fitchell?

John Wood

M. A. Blakey

Benj Lang

Personally appeared before me in open court Daniel T. ??, John Wood, Micajah Blakey and Benjamin Lang who being duly sworn deposeth and sayeth that they were present and saw James Mitchell sign and acknowledge the annexed testament of writing as his last will and testament and that he the testastor was of sound mind at that time and that he together with the above named witnesses subscribed their names in the presents of each other sworn to and subscribed in Open Court this the 21st day of the February A.D. 1825.

Benjamin S. Bibb                                              Daniel T. ?Fitchell/

Judge County Court                                        John Wood

 

So, now, of course, I have to figure out who these witnesses are and what happened to these children.

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I haven’t been posting much lately, but one of the good things about having a blog out there is you can still hear from readers and sometimes make connections to family members.

One comment today took me back to a posting I made a little over a year ago when I found the listing of the inhabitants of the St. Louis Insane Asylum on the 1900 census.  In response, a reader wrote to ask about a great-uncle’s wife who was perhaps an inmate and died in 1881.  I told him I had no info other than what I found on the census, and that he might check the 1880 listing for the institution.

Then it occurred to me that I should perhaps check to see if indeed there was a listing.   Always a good idea, don’t you think?  :-)

So I fired up my Ancestry.com subscription and limited the search to the 1880 census.  But how to search for an institution when I didn’t know anyone’s name?  So I decided to try just putting “St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri, USA” into the “Lived In” box and entered “insane asylum” (without the quotes) in the keyword box.  What I got was a listing for another agency in St. Louis–one for orphans with asylum in the title.  So I tried just typing in insane, and again, I got listings for persons who were classified as insane.  You may remember that this particular census year, enumerators were instructed to note persons who were “blind, deaf and dumb, crippled, maimed, idiotic, insane, bedridden, or otherwise disabled.”  Typing in only the word asylum seemed to work the best.  Or perhaps I just made the best pick from the list this time.  In any event, it requires some trial and error.

The listings for the residents of the St. Louis Insane Asylum begin on page 1 (penned), 479 (stamped) in ED 438 for St. Louis County, St. Louis City.  The enumerator also notes that this is the 237th Election Precinct of the 27th Ward.   There are about 11 pages of inmates and workers listed.  It is important to note that the census taker did not write the name of the institution at the top of the page but only along the left edge.  In this same section, beginning on page 20 (penned), 484A (stamped) are the residents of the City Poor House–again, only noted along the left margin.

I think I remember that the Soundex system had a separate index for institutions.  Finding the listings for these institutions without a persons name using the databases is a little trickier.  Anyone know of a better method of finding institutions in census databases?  I also found some schools, convents, and other hospitals in this quest, by the way–all enumerations of use to researchers but accessing them without a specific person’s name takes some patience.

Again, if you want more information about these institutions in St. Louis, I refer you to David A. Lossos’ page on Early St. Louis Hospitals, Homes and Asylums.

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If you have tried to do research for Oklahoma from afar, you know how scarce online records for this place are.  Today I learned of two new to the internet resources.

The first is that early burial records for Fairlawn Cemetery here in Oklahoma City has gone online.  This is one of the oldest burial grounds in Oklahoma City, which if you recall was established overnight by the land run of 1889.  The images are of Fairlawn’s record books and they are not searchable.  However, it is fairly easy to browse them, and the benefit of being able to look at the book is that you actually get more information.  There is no public index for deaths in Oklahoma so this is a wonderful resource for central Oklahoma.

For now, the information begins in 1901.  My source tells me the earlier books have been scanned and will be up within a month or so.  We look forward to having access to these records for so many of Oklahoma City’s early citizens.

Secondly, I have just found marriage records for Oklahoma counties have been put up at FamilySearch.  As with many states, Oklahoma has no statewide index to marriages.  This database has images where available–I found an image of my parents’ 1950 marriage in Beaver County, including images of the index–one for the grooms and one for the brides.  However, I found only an index entry to what I believe is probably a 1909 marriage between my the great-great aunt and uncle in Alfalfa County. (My great-grandfather’s brother (Simon B. Unruh) married my great-grandmother’s sister (Josephine Buller)–I was hoping for the record of my great-grandparents 1904 marriage, but because of the pre-statehood date, I really believe it is only available in the church book.)

The entire state is not included–my understanding is that some counties declined to have their records filmed.  I hope you are one of the lucky ones!

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