All My Ancestors

As I’ve said here before, I grew up in the Texas panhandle. Needless to say, the region is not known for its recreational water spots.

Here’s my mom on an outing with her girlfriends–they’re wading–barely. This is about the extent of the water in the area of the panhandle I know.

There is a picture somewhere in my family of me, my brother and my aunt when we were about 5, 4, and 9 (respectively). We all have on swimming suits that are way too huge for us. I certainly don’t remember the occasion, but I do know that both my granddad and my uncle carried that photo for years. We were standing in the driveway of my South Dakota grandparents’ home–South Dakota was the only place we ever swam.

More frequently we fished.

There was the truly old-fashioned swimming hole down the road from my grandmother’s country store. We often spent entire afternoons in that lake–the Hilmer kids from next door to the store could usually be persuaded to come along, or vice versa, and we had a lot of fun there. (That’s Doug H. with my brother Thad in the photo above.)

Someone had rigged up a diving board–I, of course, was too chicken to jump. And if you got to close to the underside of the board, you were at risk of getting leeches. I suppose it was actually a fairly clean lake as it was spring-fed, but when I think back on it now, I’m surprised we survived. There was a very small island a few yards out–I wasn’t a strong enough swimmer to make it out there except floating in my inner-tube. And in those days, it really was the inner tube from a tire that we used. If we could wrangle a tube from a tractor tire, we’d hit the big time! There was gravel in the bottom of the lake so it really wasn’t a bad place to swim.

Here’s the best picture I have of someone in my family in a swimming suit:

It’s my mom, and I think this photo was taken on her honeymoon. Mom and Dad married 21 May 1950 in Beaver County, Oklahoma, and came to Oklahoma City for their honeymoon. I suspect that’s Lake Overholser in the background.

My mother had red hair and the palest skin you can imagine. She really really didn’t like water–she’d never learned to swim and it terrified her. It’s just as well my brothers and I did most of our swimming in the summers we spent with grandparents. She also sunburned through her clothes so this picture is pretty amazing. But it was her honeymoon, and she was very young, so I’m sure allowances can be made.

But I love this picture of her–I’d saved it as “Bathing Beauty Mom” in my files. I’m really surprised it survived her culling of the family pictures, but I’m really glad it did.

Written for the 49th Carnival of Genealogy.

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Yesterday I wrote about finding the Missing Crew Reports of the U.S. Army Air Forces at Footnote. These are evidently called MACRs in the lingo of the day. My great-uncle Lloyd Crabtree was a prisoner at Stalag I at Barth from the time of his plane going down on 11 Jan 1944 until liberation 1 May 1945 when it was liberated by the Russians. Uncle Lloyd suffered damage to one of his ears from frostbite he received while in the camp.

In doing my research for that post, I also found a terrific website entitled World War – II Prisoners of War – Stalag Luft I, created and maintained by Mary Smith and Barbara Freer, daughters of Dick Williams, Jr., also a former POW. I found it by googling on Uncle Lloyd’s name.

This site has maps, sketches of the layout of the camp, lists of who was there and where they were located in the camp, some of the stories and poems and diaries from the prisoners, and photographs. There is information on the guards and interrogators as well as copies of letters. There are links to other POW stories and websites. I found Uncle Lloyd’s name listed in two different rooms in the “Roommates” section, and then when I consulted his book, I saw that he had indeed lived in two different rooms. One of his roommates was also named Crabtree, which he acknowledged, and referred to him as “Bugle,” his nickname while he was there. He talked about there being more space in the North Compound, so he and Bugle moved to the North 1 Compound, Barrack 8, Room 7 from the crowded South Compound about May 1944. He lists some of his roommates which match those listed on the website’s “Roommates” section.

Uncle Lloyd was the bombardier in his crew. That means he was the guy whose position was right up in the nose of the plane, in a plexiglass nose cone. Here’s a picture. It gives me the willies just to look at that person in the nose-cone. This site is just one example of what’s available online about the B-17s.

Another online site that proved helpful is the good ol’ Wikipedia. Reading through the entry for B-17 Flying Fortress, I found that 11 January 1944, the day Uncle Lloyd’s plane went down, was not a good day for the USAAF. They lost 60B-17s that day. The planes flying this mission were actually called back because of worsening weather, but several had already entered hostile air space and did not turn back. Uncle Lloyd’s crew was evidently among these.

I never cease to be amazed at what the Internet has enabled us to do in sharing our information. The World War – II Prisoners of War – Stalag Luft I website is wonderful, with excellent instructions for conducting this type of research as well as a real wealth of information that until the Internet, was difficult to locate, much less obtain.

Take a look and say one more prayer of gratitude for those who served. And one for those whose efforts make this sort of information available.

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This is my great Uncle Lloyd. I feel so fortunate to have gotten to get acquainted with him in the last years of his life. I’d always heard about Uncle Lloyd who’d done a stint in a prison camp during the war. But he and Aunt Marge lived in Houston and then retired to Oregon so I didn’t get to see them all that much when I was growing up. Aunt Marge was my (paternal) Grandmother Osborne’s youngest sister, and she was married to Uncle Lloyd.

Uncle Lloyd was the only survivor of his B-17 bomber group. They were on their 4th mission, flying over Holland when they were shot down.

Recently, Footnote.com put up Missing Crew Reports as part of their holdings. I searched on Uncle Lloyd’s name, not knowing what to expect, but up came the report for his crew. All the names are there as well as Uncle Lloyd’s account of the 11 January 1944 incident. Perhaps the most poignant portion of this packet of materials is the “Individual Casualty Questionnaire” that Uncle Lloyd had to complete for each of his crew. He had to write “I think he was killed by enemy gunfire in ship” 9 times, once on each form for each crew member. Once it is crossed out and replaced by “He probably was killed when ship crashed.” This last was about the navigator who had opened his chute by mistake in the nose of the plane and couldn’t be persuaded to jump when it was time to go.

This packet of materials was evidently sent to him about 2 years after he returned home. His letter is dated 15 March 1946 from Blanco, Texas. He and Aunt Marge went to the Hill Country of Texas to a sheep ranch for some recovery time. Aunt Marge has written about the healing time they spent there in her own memoirs.

In 1979, Uncle Lloyd responded to another grand-niece’s request for an interview of a combat veteran. It was the impetus that let Uncle Lloyd finally talk to us about his war experiences. He eventually wrote Every Twenty-Nine Seconds which tells of his experiences during World War II. He said one of the first things he recalled was being in the nose of the B-17 before daylight. There were about 6 of the big birds ahead of his on the runway awaiting take off, and they were supposed to clear the runway every twenty-nine seconds. He tells about seeing the Zuider Zee as he was floating down out of his “ship,” and the Dutch woman whose thatched roof he landed on giving him gingerbread and milk before some of Goering’s Youths took him into custody.

He included some correspondence he had with some of the crew members’ family members and with a Dutch researcher. The researcher asked Uncle Lloyd if he would go again. Here’s his reply:

As terrible as it was, it was the price that we had to pay to keep America free. Yes, I would go again. If we had not gone, this present generation would probably not be allowed to ask questions to search for the truth.

The freedom to ask those questions was really really important to Uncle Lloyd. He was a gentle, funny, loving man. This Memorial Day I’ve been thinking about him a lot.

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Everything’s up to date in Kansas City, y’know.

It really is a great conference. I’ve spent some of the time working in the OHS booth which is great fun–I love discussing their Oklahoma relatives with folks.

So far, my best find came from the goodie bag with a copy of Everton’s Genealogical Helper inside. There’s a very small 1″ ad at the back of the magazine, advertising a CD version of the May-Keith Families of Arkansas by John Schlaud. Cousin Kitty and I have been trying for ages to reach this man to see if we could buy a paper copy. And here’s the new phone number and email. The Helper may have just earned another subscription.

Yippeee.

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Since I’ve gone to work at a place where I look up other people’s relatives in the census on a daily basis, I’ve been amazed at the institutions that are enumerated, and the information found within. I learn something new every time I find one of these. I’ve posted previously about the prison population posted in the 1900 census for Detroit, Michigan.

The most recent find is the 1900 enumeration of the “St. Louis Insane Asylum” in, where else, St. Louis, Missouri. There are 15 pages of records–the first page and half or so are employees and the rest are listed as inmates. Hugo M. Vollmer, census taker, appears to have done a very thorough job. I wonder how he did his work–did he go through records, did he interview staff, did he interview inmates, how did he gather all this information? A check on him reveals that he is a 26 year old clerk employed at the Asylum, born in Missouri to Germany-born parents. That makes me believe that he probably did his work from the records at his disposal.  1900 is the census year that gives the month and year of birth, the year of immigration and citizenship, plus the place of birth and that of the entry’s parents. Most of the places of birth for parents is entered as “unknown” for the inmates. But, a profession listed for each person, including Alice McCormack, Irish-born 28-year-old prostitute. There’s 68-year-old female physician Sarah L. Jones–what is her story? I kept coming across “nihil” listed in the profession column. It took me a while to realize this meant “none,”–as in “nil,” I suppose.

It would be interesting to compare the demographics of this population with those of St. Louis at large–for example, many of the inmates appear to have been foreign-born. I was somewhat surprised to find a few more males than females listed.

There’s more information about the Asylum at Early St. Louis Hospitals, Homes, and Asylums.

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