Oklahoma « All My Ancestors

25 July 2010

Insane

Filed under: Alabama,Anderton Family,Cemeteries,Oklahoma — allmyanc @ 9:29 pm

“You have to be prepared for what you might find.”

It’s advice I’ve given lots of beginning researchers and I’ve recently encountered a situation that requires me to take my own advice.

Last year the Oklahoma Historical Society Research Division was fortunate enough to receive a grant to participate in the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP). You may know this program as “Chronicling America.” It is a wonderful, free site that provides digital images of newspapers published before 1923. Newspapers from several states have been made available, and only recently, the first newspaper from Oklahoma was included. These newspapers are keyword searchable, and I thought I should give it a spin.

My maternal grandmother’s family homesteaded in Beaver County. I grew up in adjacent Ochiltree County, Texas. So it is a part of the world I know fairly well. I’ve written elsewhere on this blog about searching the Beaver County newspaper for an obit for my great-grandmother and instead finding a news story about her suicide. My family did not “trade” in Beaver–they instead went across the state line to Perryton, Texas.

So while I didn’t think I’d find much, I thought I’d give it a whirl. This time I found information about my grandmother’s grandfather.

James Anderton and his wife Sarah Davis Anderton came to Oklahoma Territory, probably about 1904. There’s a record of a homestead filed 20 April 1905 in Beaver County and the subsequent “proving up” in 1910. James and Sarah were in their early 60s when they came to Oklahoma from Marshall County, Alabama. One of their sons homesteaded in Roger Mills County, but others, including my great-grandfather Robert, came on west to the panhandle. My grandmother told me that her grandmother Anderton used to want to go back to Alabama, but she died in Beaver County, Oklahoma, 11 April 1915. She is buried in Blue Mound Cemetery, a small country cemetery atop a slight rising in the western part of the county.

A few months later, in June, James applied for his Confederate Pension in Oklahoma. He had served in Ward’s Battery Light Artillery from Alabama. Oklahoma was the last state to offer pensions to Confederate vets, and James was awarded about $315 in September, 1915. He evidently took his pension money and returned to Alabama. He died in 1918 and is buried at Cochran Cemetery in Madison County, Alabama.

When I decided to try to search the Beaver Herald using the name “Anderton,” I expected to find several false hits on the name “Anderson.” Instead what I found in the 15 Jan 1915 edition was an account of a the County Commissioners’ reimbursement to James Hood, for “helping arrest Jas Anderton and guarding him.” In the same record, T. B. Jones is listed as being reimbursed for ”car hire for Jas Anderton to Beaver.” And then there’s the listing of B. W. Webber’s reimbursements: one entry for “board for Jas Anderton” and one for ”arrest of Jas Anderton, insane, guarding him and bringing him to Beaver.”

Insane?

Despite hearing lots about her family from my grandmother, I heard nothing of this incident. Perhaps since she was 9, she wasn’t aware of it. But my main question has to do with the nature of what precipitated this arrest. The community where the Andertons lived was about 30 miles from Beaver, the county seat. How did word travel to Beaver that an arrest out in the southwestern part of the county was warranted? And what was great-great grandfather James doing to make this necessary? Was it a case of dementia? Was alcohol involved? Seems like the record would indicate drunkeness if this was the case.

So many questions. My next step for this incident is to look at court records in Beaver County courthouse.

Another example of being willing to take what is found and then needing to dig a little deeper. As Michael John Neill said at the workshop I attended yesterday, we genealogists act like 3 year olds because we constantly ask “why?”

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2 July 2010

News in 1913 Lawton, Oklahoma

Filed under: Oklahoma — allmyanc @ 1:54 pm

Every time I have to do a look up in the newspaper for an obit or a news story, I am amazed at what a treasure of information they hold. I’ve decided to use some of what I find as blog fodder. It won’t meet my stated purpose of blogging about my own family, but it will be someone’s family.

I was searching the Lawton newspapers for obituaries and I was struck by the scarcity of them. Marriages were regularly listed–Fort Sill was nearby so there was a plethora of young men. Births appear less frequently, and usually in the “about town” column that records visits from out of town relatives or the amount of rain received south of town.

There were two newspapers at this time period–the Lawton Constitution and The Daily News and Star. On the front page of the 10 Jul 1913 edition, there was an interesting mix of stories. Mrs. Mattie Payne calls for a meeting of all the ladies who settled in Lawton any time during 1901 to phone or write her. She is organizing a club of such “as an auxilary [sic] to the men’s club just organized.” This reminded me of the story about the establishment of the Daughters of the American Revolution–the men wouldn’t allow the women to join their organization, so the ladies started their own. And we all know how that turned out.

There’s also a list of the visitors to nearby Medicine Park–the holiday weekend, no doubt. This resort was apparently established shortly after statehood and is still in operation. I’d love to know how some of my relatives spent their July 4 holiday.

Then there was the story about John Tremont, who, together with Mrs. Ada Woodward and Emma Rivers, was charged with having killed Mrs. Woodward’s husband Sherman by administering “rat biscuits placed in sardines.” The jury in neighboring Chickasha evidently could not reach as verdict so the jury was discharged.

Here’s the one obituary I found among these stories on the front page. Interesting that 62 was considered aged. William, one of ”the Hogg boys” was 30 if the 1910 census is accurate–

Aged Lawton Lady is Death’s Victim

Mothes [sic] of Mrs. G. F. Japp and Hogg Boys Succumbs to Reaper

Mrs. Mary Hogg, 62 years of age, died at her home, 207 Park avenue, at 6 o’clock last night, after an illness of the past several weeks. The body will be buried tomorrow morning, 10 o’clock, from the residence, the Rev. T. J. Irwin to preach the fueneral [sic] sermon.

Mrs. Hogg was the mother of William and Percy Hogg of this city and Mrs. G. F. Japp, residing southeast of town. She also has a daughter, Mrs. Emma Rupert, residing in Lincoln, Nebraska.

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30 June 2010

More fun with Oklahoma Vital Records

Filed under: Oklahoma,Vital Records — allmyanc @ 10:32 am

Because I’ve recently done a presentation on Vital Records and Their Substitutes, and because it’s an ongoing topic with researchers, and because Oklahoma has it’s own set of problems regarding vital records–I thought I’d share this article I encountered today in the Lawton Morning News, 23 Nov 1919.

A bit of background. Oklahoma was not a state until November 1907. As you can imagine, this wreaks havoc on those of us who had ancestors here early and want vital records. Registrations was mandated early, but neither birth nor death records are consistently held until the mid 1930s.

Amy over at WeTree is one of the “victims.” She has an ancestor who died in Oklahoma in 1919 who, according to the Oklahoma State Department of Health, does not have a death certificate. (Never mind that they found one for this ancestor’s spouse who died in 1913–we don’t really expect consistency, do we?) So I was browsing through the Lawton newspaper to see if there was an obituary. I found this article about compliance with the Health Board Regulations. It explains a lot:

COUNTIES REPORT BIRTHS TO STATE

One-third of Counties Complying Health Board Regulations

Oklahoma City, Nov. 22–Nearly one-third of the counties of the state are not complying with state health department regulations on reporting births and deaths to the vital statistic bureau, according to a report just made to Commissioner Arthur R. Lewis, by Ethel Hawley, state registrar.

Last month 23 counties made absolutely complete reports of all births and deaths. In September there were only 19. In 258 out of 399 registration districts, reports were made. There are 46 districts with no registrars and 85 registrars who didn’t report.

Reports for October show 2753 births and 989 deaths, an increase of 244 births and 102 deaths over September.

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13 March 2010

Oklahoma Territorial Census of 1890

Filed under: Oklahoma — allmyanc @ 9:55 am

At my place of work, the library in the Oklahoma Historical Society Research Division, we have just finished re-scanning and re-indexing the 1890 Oklahoma Territorial Census. The new index is available online at the OHS website, and the cd with the census (and more) will soon be available for purchase.

As you probably know, most of the 1890 federal census was destroyed, leaving a huge gap in searching families as they began moving west as the lands started opening up.

On the eve of preparing for statehood in 1907, a census was taken of Oklahoma Territory. At the time, this included 7 counties, though that number is deceiving. For example, what was then called Beaver County encompassed all of the panhandle and what was then called “No Man’s Land”–much more than the current Beaver County.

For some unknown reason, this census was never sent to Washington, DC. We have the original sheets at the Historical Society. Within the last year or so, this census became available on Ancestry.com, though it is not included in the search when “U.S. Census” is chosen. It was badly scanned and badly indexed, both originally and then at Ancestry.

The new scans are much clearer. And the new index is much better. “We” probably still have mistakes. Some of the handwriting is incredibly bad and by census takers who obviously could not follow directions and may have been only minimally literate in the English language. But those of us who have worked with census records know this is the way it works. This time, however, the index was done by genealogists–persons who are used to working with these sorts of records.

Later I will post about a project I’ve pulled from this census. I’m still mulling it around in my head, but it took initial shape as I was indexing page after page of the digitized scans.

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14 February 2010

A Trip Down Memory Lane via Google Maps

Filed under: Cemeteries,Oklahoma,Perryton,South Dakota,Texas — allmyanc @ 5:46 pm

Written for 52 Weeks To Better Genealogy – Challenge #7

from Amy Lenertz Coffin at http://wetree.blogspot.com/2010/01/52-weeks-to-better-genealogy.html

Play with Google Maps (http://maps.google.com). This is a helpful tool for determining the locations of addresses in your family history. Where your ancestral homestead once stood may now be a warehouse, a parking lot or a field. Perhaps the house is still there. When you input addresses in Google Maps, don’t forget to use the Satellite View and Street View options for perspectives that put you were right there where your ancestors once stood. If you’ve used this tool before, take sometime and play with it again. Push all the buttons, click all the links and devise new ways it can help with your personal genealogy research. If you have a genealogy blog, write about your experiences with Google Maps, or suggest similar easy (and free) tools that have helped in your own research.

As I’ve written here many times, I come from a family of farmers–persons who had land, for the most part. Those farms and ranches are no longer in the family. But I can visit any time I like using Google Map.

My maternal grandparents lived on a ranch in South Dakota.

The main buildings were the house and the barn. The barn, at the time of this photo, sported my grandad’s brand above the doors, Lazy XY. The house actually faced north, but this is the southern exposure. It was too cold in South Dakota to have a north facing entry, so we always used the “back porch” as the entry.

My grandparents had moved most of their things back to Texas by the 1980s–they were in their 80s by then and they first spent winters in Oklahoma and Texas with my folks and my aunt and uncle, and later stayed “in the south” year round. Shortly before my grandmother died in 1998, the house burned. We don’t know the details, we just know that it burned to the ground. In a sense, it was a blessing that the house took care of itself–

When I find myself thinking about the carefree summers I spent at my grandparents’ ranch, I look at my photos, but I also often pull up their place on Google Maps:

I can still see the barn and the tree rows planted east of the house to catch the wind and snow. A trailer home replaces the house for the family that lives there now. If I really want to, I can move to the right on the map to “roam” the pasture. And I can follow the road (306th Ave. on this map) a couple of miles down the hill to the little village of Canning where my grandmother ran the country store and post office, and where we lived the year I was in the 6th grade.

This picture brings back lots of memories.

Over there at the left is the beginning of the spring-fed lakes where we swam in the summer time and ice-skated in the winter. At the right, the “top” of Cactus Loop, is where the school was. There was a cemetery behind it and a huge hill down the side. We sledded in the winter and rolled down in tractor tires in the spring. Why we weren’t killed is amazing to me. My grandmother’s store and PO was to the left of the intersection of Chesley Rd and 206th St. It looks like there’s some sort of barn there now. Above where Spring St, crosses Chesley St. is the church, with another cemetery behind it. On up that hill takes me back to my grandparent’s ranch. See the house at the lower right? I won’t include the name of the people who live here, but my granddad helped build that house–with someone as particular as he was–they got along fine. The drilled holes for the nails before they pounded them in–no nail guns here.

I have these places, and others, bookmarked on Google Map. I like visiting them occasionally. There’s a country cemetery in Beaver County I like to visit–it’s easy to count the miles as I travel down the road, and I know how many miles and which directions it is to visit where my great Aunt Edna and Uncle Gurly lived, and where my great-grandparents lived out there in Beaver County Oklahoma.

And then I can always “drive-by” the house where I grew up (marked with the small white heart)–it’s a different color now but it’s still located across the street from the high school, between the First Christian Church and the Church of Christ on Jackson Dr., and I can drag Main Street if I’m feeling really nostalgic.

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6 October 2009

Divorce 1914 Style

Filed under: Ephemera,Oklahoma,Vital Records — allmyanc @ 9:50 pm

I’ve begun indexing court records at my job. The box I’ve worked on so far contains divorce cases from district court in 1914. The files are much like probate files I’ve used in other courthouses. For the most part, legal sized pages are folded into fourths, placed into a cardboard envelope, and tied with a red twill ribbon.

These records are a gold-mine of information, and for now, I’m very frustrated by not being able to do more in-depth indexing. For a variety of reasons, I’m only recording which court, the type of case and the names of the defendant and the plaintiff. Because of lack of space, we cannot unfold and put these documents into a file folder. I hope to eventually be able to scan them so they can be more easily accessed and indexed. Right now, they are in a basement storage in a huge stack of boxes. My efforts are the the beginning foray into organizing these records for use.

I have not worked in divorce records before. The information found in these petitions nearly always includes the date and place of the marriage. One I read today indicated the marriage took place in 1899 Havana, Cuba–was the groom a soldier? How did the bride get to Cuba? Neither name appeared to be a Cuban surname. I want to know the story of this wedding. A surprising number of the marriages did not take place in Oklahoma, the site of the divorce.

In about 95% of the cases I’ve processed so far, the woman is suing the man for the divorce–she typically states that he does not provide support, and, in many cases, that he has disappeared. This is substantiated by the files containing some documents such as returned mail as well as notices published in the newspaper requiring the defendant to respond to the summons. Too often the woman describes being verbally and physically abused–again, substantiated by restraining orders. One case names the person with whom the defendant has been “committing adultry,” and another phrase is handwritten in–”…and with other persons known to the defendant.”

AS I’ve said, the majority of the records in this box are divorces. But today I came across a case filed for breach of promise. The plaintiff/woman was asking for $10,000 in damages. She said she’d quit her job at the telephone company and made arrangements to be married as she had been promised. She even included a letter he’d written her from Texas. From my non-legally proficient eyes, it looked like she had a good case. Unfortunately for my curiosity, there was nothing in the file that showed the final disposition of the case.

There was also an annulment petition. Evidently the groom was only 17 when he married and his “next friend,” his father in this case, was petitioning for annulment–the basis for the petition was that the groom was not 21, there were no children, and the couple was not living together. Another story to pique my curiosity.

One of the few cases of the husband suing the wife for divorce was a man stating that he’d met all the duties and responsibilities of a husband only to find that his wife would not cook meals or mend his clothes. He stated that he’d made arrangements for her to be able to shop at the best grocers and butchers, but that she insisted he eat out, incurring additional expense. He also spelled out her unwillingness to mend his clothes, also incurring expense since he had to hire a tailor. In addition, he said he made money available to hire household help, but she refused to hire anyone. So he was asking for their marriage to be dissolved.

This peek into 1914 matrimony and law has been fascinating. The names and ages of the children are included, and, in some cases, the name and address of the business and it’s financial worth, usually owned by the husband. In one particularly sticky custody case, the names and addresses of both sets of grandparents was in the file. Often the woman asks that her maiden name be restored so there’s another valuable piece of information.

The gloves I wear while processing the papers are filthy after handling about 20 of the packets. Refolding the documents and putting them into their cardboard envelopes goes against everything I know about preserving such documents. But for now, we need to record enough information to make them minimally identifiable and accessible. Here’s hoping they retain their fascination for me.

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4 September 2009

Serendipity at FGS

Filed under: Arkansas,How to,Oklahoma,Spindle Family,Texas — allmyanc @ 4:38 pm

Today for part of the today I staffed the booth for the Oklahoma Genealogical Society. It is always fun to talk to people about their Oklahoma roots. Persons researching family in Oklahoma express a great deal of frustration–Oklahoma won’t turn loose of their vital records, not even an index. And since it’s a relatively new state, entering the Union in November 1907, vital records are really not all that consistent until the mid 1930s. I was talking to a Texan who was frustrated by this, but she also asked some questions that reminded me how much we have to get out of our skin when doing research. Because Texas kept birth records at the county level, she assumed Oklahoma did too. Not so, as a general rule. And then she asked how long people had to be deceased before their death certificate could be released. In Texas, people have to have been deceased at least 25 years–I blogged about my extreme frustration with the Texas system earlier. As far as I know, there is no time requirement nor do you have to prove relationship, as is also the case in Texas.

One of my favorites was Meg Hacker’s talk about the criminal case files for Fort Smith housed at the National Archives in Fort Worth. She says if you have family in western Arkansas or Indian Territory during the time period, you can probably find them in the index. She said she usually makes this statement and some audience members are just sure that their relatives would not be in the index to criminal cases. She says she hasn’t been wrong yet–there were just so many ways to get into trouble in Judge Parker’s court. So if your family was in this area, take a look at the Archival Research Catalog (ARC) at NARA. Some members of my family are in there–they were in western Arkansas and they were evidently in violation of one of the liquor laws. Meg indicated that it was common to sell pound cake or candy and include a free shot of whiskey. I’ll be interested to see if my family were this entrepreneurial of if they just went for the straight sale when I order a copy of the file.

My really serendipitious find today was a post card depicting the huge inn and livery stable building operated by my husband’s great-grandfather in Stamford, Texas. There are little girls standing out front who may be family members–there were only 12 children. I’ll post a picture of the postcard later–I evidently put it in my car with the load of books I bought for the library. I was prowling through the Texas postcards to see if there were any for my hometown in the panhandle–didn’t find those but I was thrilled to find the photo of Thomas Spindle’s Stamford enterprise.

Tonight is the banquet and tomorrow it’s back home. I picked up literature about the next conference in Knoxville. Hope I can make that one too.

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16 April 2009

Untruthful Grandparents

Filed under: Anderton Family,Memes,Oklahoma,Unruh Family,Vital Records — allmyanc @ 12:30 am

Here’s the Weekly Genealogy Blogging Prompt for Week #15: List some vital signs. Talk about specific birth, marriage and death certificates. Topics may include misspelled names, fudged dates, other anomalies that stand out in your records.

My grandparents both fibbed on their marriage certificate.

My grandmother was born in what is now Beckham County, Oklahoma Territory, 19 January 1906.

My granddad was born in Dewey County, Oklahoma, just after statehood, on 2 November 1908.

In 1929, they were both living with their families in the Oklahoma panhandle in Beaver County.

Lida Lee Anderton and Elmer Dewey Unruh drove two counties away to marry in Woodward, Woodward County, Oklahoma 25 March 1929. Google Maps calculates this trip as an hour and a half today. I don’t know how long the trip was at that time, over mostly dirt roads, but it can’t have been quick.

Lida’s age on 25 March 1929 was 23 years and 3 months or so.

Elmer’s age on 25 March 1929 was 20 years and 5 months or so.

Here’s what they wrote on their license and certificate:

elmerlidamarriagelic

According to this document, Elmer was 21 and Lida was 22! Not a big lie, but not the truth, nonetheless. Lida ignored her last birthday and Elmer assumed his next. I’ve often wondered if Elmer had been the oldest by almost 3 years, would they have felt the need to misrepresent their ages? Probably not, which is part of what makes this act so interesting. Even today we assume that grooms are older than their brides, though we have become somewhat more tolerant, I think.

My grandmother always told me that her marriage license had burned up in a house fire. I accepted this story because I did know that her family had at least 2 house fires. However, when examined more closely, those fires were in the homes of her parents and really should have had nothing to do with their married daughter’s marriage record. I don’t think either one of us thought about this aspect of the story at the time.

As a beginning genealogist I wrote the Woodward County Clerk for a copy of my grandparents’ marriage record. They wrote back telling me that they had no record of such a marriage. Of course I knew they were married but how was I going to document this marriage? If I was going to have trouble with collecting documents for my grandparents, how would I manage the generations further back?

In current Texas panhandle terms, Woodward, Oklahoma, is not very far from my hometown of Perryton, Texas–a short 2 hours. Years after my failed request for this marriage record, my mom was going to Woodward for some reason I now forget. I asked her if she would be willing to go by the Woodward courthouse, “just in case.” She was a good sport about running these sorts of local errands, so when she called to tell me the results, I could hardly believe what I was hearing.

Not only was their marriage record on file, the County Clerk still had the original marriage license application and certificate of marriage. Did she want them? Did she want them!! So I am now in possession of the original marriage certificate of my maternal grandparents. My grandparents never returned for the record and it evidently was not mailed to them. My grandparents didn’t go to Woodward often–if they went to a “big town,” they went to Perryton, Texas, which was less than one-half the distance. So going to Woodward to marry adds another layer of mystery to this deception. They went because no one knew them there and they had a better chance of getting by with their “new” ages.

This exercise taught me several lessons–many of which come as second nature now. One is to be skeptical of what you read, even in official records. Those records are generated by human beings, and human beings are not perfect. Another is to not take “no” for an answer, and that there is no substitute for being on the scene yourself (or, in this case, sending one’s mom). I prize this document for the picture it provides of my grandparents as young people–traveling to the neighboring county to marry, away from persons who would have known them, except with the couple who accompanied them as witnesses, and who were also married that day. They always celebrated their “correct” birthdays–they included them on the Delayed Birth Certificates they filed in 1971.

So a final lesson is to be sure to collect all the documents and compare the information they include. And sometimes they tell a story beyond “just the facts”–a little insight into personalities behind those dry documents.

elmerlidanm