All My Ancestors

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.

This is another prompt of a sort that is making the rounds of genealogical blogs. It has to do with placing our families 100 years ago. See Lisa’s 100 Years in America that started it all. See the end of the comments of her post for additional blog posts.

Here’s a photo of part of my family that must have been taken about 1908.

Someone in my family identified the people in this photo–making allowances for corrections based on gender and age, I believe the people in this photo are, from the left, Eula Price Cromwell, Lillian Cromwell, Lida Lee Anderton (child, and my grandmother), Grace Cromwell Anderton (my great-grandmother), Daniel Webster Cromwell (my gggrandfather), Gordon B. “Jack” Cromwell, Martha Jane Ball Cromwell (my gggrandmother).

My grandmother was born in January of 1906 and this photo of her looks like she’s about 2 1/2. Uncle “Jack,” the other child in the photo, was supposedly born in March 1898–he certainly doesn’t look age 10, though I did find him listed as attending Poarch School in 1908. Grannie might be a bit older, but I thought this was an interesting picture of a century ago. I believe it was taken outside their home in the Poarch Community, Beckham County, Oklahoma. Statehood was in November 1907, so this is also just after Oklahoma became a state. The Daniel Cromwell family is enumerated in 1910 as living in the Poarch Community, Beckham County, Oklahoma. I know they were in this area by 1904 because they have a son, Burton, buried in the Poarch Cemetery in that county who died in April of that year.

It looks like Great-great Grandfather Daniel is holding a crutch. I know he had what was probably rheumatoid arthritis. I also found this blurb in the newspaper from the time that confirms his ailments:

from the Carter Express, (23 December 1910) “Mr. Cromwell is reported to be suffering very much yet. Being a cripple already with rheumatism we fear that this accident will go hard with him.”

They didn’t mince words in those days, did they?

And if you have relatives in Beckham County, let me recommend their USGenWeb page–it has lots of excellent transcriptions of early newspapers and county history. It provided lots of data for filling in between “just the facts” of dates, places and times.

Martha Jane Ball Cromwell’s grave is unmarked. I feel fortunate to know her resting place because of a trip I took to California in 19??. I took my parents out there to visit my brother who then lived in Fresno, but we also visited Auntie in Buena Park. As in any worthwhile family visit, we went to Olive Lawn to see her mother’s grave, my great-grandmother Roxy Grace Cromwell Anderton. Then we drove to Rosemead to see where Roxy Grace’s mother, Martha Jane Ball Cromwell was buried in Savannah Memorial Park, aka El Monte.

Martha Jane, born 1858 in Iowa, survived the attack on the wagon train that killed her father and uncle in 1862, went on to Nevada with her mother who shortly remarried and then died, and by 1870 was back in Iowa to be reared by her grandparents, William G. and Elizabeth Charlton Ball in Warren County, Iowa. She subsequently moved to Arkansas, married Daniel W. Cromwell, reared 8 children in Texas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. Sometime after Daniel’s death in 1925, Martha Jane went to California where some of her children were living. [Daniel is buried in a country cemetery named Blue Mound in Beaver County, Oklahoma. His grave is marked by the funeral home marker set in concrete. You can see it here.]

Her grave is not marked. No other family members are buried in this cemetery. I have since confirmed with the Southern California Genealogical Society that this is the site of Martha Jane’s burial. You can see the placement of her grave on a map I’ve posted with her entry on the family website at www.allmyancestors.com. And I’ve finally made a call to Valley Monument Company in neighboring San Gabriel to see what it would cost to put a marker on her grave. Here’s what I found–we can order a small (12″ x 24″) dark gray or black granite marker for $260. The cemetery’s setting fee 4 years ago was $100–the person I spoke with is checking to see if it’s gone up. So for probably less than $400, we can mark her grave. What do you think?

It’s been almost 70 years since Martha Jane died. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if by the 70^th anniversary of her death on 21 April 2008 we could have a marker in place? You can use Paypal to make a donation using the button below or I will most definitely accept personal checks, money orders and particularly cold, hard cash. I’ll keep a running total available so you can see how close we are to reaching the goal. Please, if you are one of Martha Jane’s descendants, consider helping with a small donation to mark Martha Jane’s resting place.

For more information about using Paypal (it’s free), check out this link.

Today I received this in the mail. Remember I posted about this great-grandmother who some sources say died in St. Louis. I still don’t know if this is she, but this column is from the St. Louis Post, from 22 January 1897, p. 3. St. Louis Public Library sent an invoice for $1.25, which, of course, I will pay. But I would like to have a copy of the beginning of the column–note that it says this is continued from page one. There might be a bit more information about the permits or there might not be, but it would be worth another $1.25 for me to know. Or, perhaps this newspaper is available through my GenealogyBank subscription. I’ll check.

The age for this person is right as is the name, but there were lots of Cromwells and lots of Elizabeths. I checked Rudy’s List of Archaic Medical Terms, aka Antiquus Morbus, to see what was meant by “chronic enteritis.” It appears to be a inflammation of the intestine, particularly the small intestine.

To be continued . . .

I have some old information, gleaned from a query published in an old copy of the Benton County Pioneer (Benton Co., AR) that one of my 3rd great-grandmothers died in a hospital in St. Louis.

Last night I was surfing around looking at death records that are available online* and came across the St. Louis Library site. They have indexed and uploaded several years of death notices and obituaries from the the St. Louis Post Dispatch. The sparsely documented information I have on Elizabeth Mary May Cromwell, c1840-1897, indicates that the date of her death would be included in the index.

This is the entry for Elizabeth Cromwell in the 1897 entries: Cromwell, Elizabeth *1/22 p3

I know some of the Missouri death certificates are online, but when I checked, the dates do not include 1897.

So, next, I noticed that there were St. Louis City death records available, tagged “requires payment,” for 1850-1908. I know that this usually means the records are available through Ancestry.com and I have a subscription. So I checked that site as well.

Sure enough, there was an Elizabeth Cromwell who died in St. Louis in 1897.

St. Louis City Death Records, 1850-1908
about Elizabeth Cromwell

My information, probably gleaned from census records, indicates the Elizabeth Cromwell who was my 3rd great-grandmother was born in Illinois or Arkansas. The Ancestry.com record states that this Elizabeth Cromwell was born in Missouri. On its own, I don’t consider that strong enough evidence to discard this as a possibility. Nor do I consider it strong enough evidence to prove this is the person I am seeking. Lots more work needs to be done. Other areas to investigate include the “Female Hospital” where she died. Is this a hospital that is still in existence in some form? In my experience, hospital records are not very easily located so I’ll try some other avenues first. It appears that her body went to the Anatomical Board–does this mean it was her or her family’s choice that she be a subject for medical research? What was behind this decision?

So far, I have emailed the library to see if additional information is available from the newspaper entry. It may be that the record in Ancestry has extracted all there is. I also need to go back and see if I can locate the original query. (Back in the “olden days” of genealogy, we had to send in our questions to genealogical publications in the areas where our relatives had lived, wait for the queries to be published, and then wait even longer to see if anyone answered. And this wasn’t even my query so I don’t know the outcome.)

I have no idea why a woman from Benton County, Arkansas, would go to St. Louis to the hospital. It may have been the place that northwestern Arkansans went for major medical help. I’m not familiar with that place in those times. It may be that one of her children or another relative was living in St. Louis, or nearby, and she was living in that household. Her husband had died in 1885, so perhaps she’d moved from Benton County. I haven’t uncovered any relatives who lived in St. Louis, but neither have I been very diligent about this line.

More research to do.

*Joe Beine is one of my genealogical heroes with his Online Searchable Death Indexes in the USA. Isn’t this a great resource?