Mightier Acorns

Revisiting The Hoardings

May 30, 2025
Taking a moment for a little shameless self-promotion

I posted this list of my other projects last May, so I thought it was time for an update. These are all ways to support what I’m doing, if you would like to do so. And, of course, you can become a paid subscriber here:

I first encountered the term “hoardings” in England, where I took it to mean the same thing as a billboard. But “advertising hoardings” refers to the large boards erected around a construction site, which can prominently feature printed graphics and designs. And that seems an appropriate description for today’s post.

Last year, I discussed the importance of writing consistently, mentioning that I like to schedule several weeks’ worth of posts in advance so I don’t feel like I’m rushing to meet a deadline. But as of this post, I’m only scheduled for the next two weeks … and while I do have several things in draft, it feels a little bit like a construction site in my draft folder.

So why not use this dusty space to advertise? And what should I advertise? How about me?

Around my 45th birthday, I realized there were several things I wanted to accomplish before turning 50 – first on the list was to take my favorite stories from the blogs I posted in the early 2000s and publish them as a book. My friend Johanna offered to be my editor, and in 2016, we published “Tad’s Happy Funtime” – named for my early blog.

Tad’s Happy Funtime – available in paperback and Kindle editions

My first (and so far, only) fiction sale was a story called “Silver,” published on the Dunesteef Audio Fiction Magazine podcast in 2008.

At the time, I was inspired to write by Escape Pod, the weekly science fiction podcast, which launched in 2005. The company has expanded to five podcasts – science fiction, fantasy, horror, Young Adult speculative fiction, and Catscast…which is cat-based speculative fiction. As you would expect.

Escape Artists, Inc. became the Escape Artists Foundation in 2023, a non-profit organization dedicated to producing free, listener-supported stories every week and paying the creators who make it all possible. If you like fiction, it will cost you nothing to visit their company website, EscapeArtists.net, and look around!

Since 2016, I’ve been an associate editor for their Pseudopod Horror Fiction podcast, where, in addition to reading submissions (an adventure in itself), I’ve hosted and narrated several episodes. You can find links to the episodes I’ve been on at this link.

In September 2021, I narrated Escape Pod 802: Sentient Being Blues, a story about a Russian mining robot that gains sentience and starts singing the blues. I had a ball doing it, and now I get to claim (factually) that I’ve appeared on the same podcasts as Anson Mount and Linda Hamilton!

Long-time readers will know that in March 2022, I published my updated Callin Family History on Lulu.com:

We hadn’t unpacked the books yet when this arrived in the mail!

This is the one I worked on for seven years – it has a BLUE cover with a portrait of the family of George W. Callin (restored and colorized by Claudia D’Souza, the Photo Alchemist).

I was inspired to start that project by the original 1911 Callin Family History:

This is a replica of the original Callin Family History published by George W. Callin in 1911. It has a RED cover and is much smaller than my Big Blue update. If you’d like a copy of this one, you can get it in either paperback or hardcover:
- link to the Paperback version
- link to the Hardcover version
And then we have:

War Poems by John H. Callin

This was my secret side-project for much of 2021. My aunt Vicki inherited a book of poetry written by her great-grandfather, John Henry Callin, and she and I collaborated on transcribing it and editing it for publication.

(The link to War Poems will ask you to verify your age due to “explicit content”; that’s because there are grisly descriptions of John’s wartime experiences in some of the poems.)

Last year, I launched another Substack, All Kinds Musick, where I try to connect with the “why” of the broad range of musicks that I love. Occasionally, I manage to write something there that has to do with family stories, so you might have seen a couple of cross-posts.

All Kinds Musick

Music is so easy to make and share today that we sometimes forget its value. Appreciating all kinds of music means exploring and learning about the people who made it, the people who loved it, and sometimes learning more about yourself.

Are you still with me? That’s very kind. I guess the only thing left to promote is my SoundCloud… which I recently learned still exists!

I only posted a few recordings to try out the service, but I was pretty proud of these two.

“Birthday Disco” is a song I wrote for my girlfriend in 1991 and recorded in the then-new electronic music studio at Glendale (Arizona) Community College.

“Beyond Belief” is probably still my favorite Elvis Costello song, recorded at home in Maryland around 2010.

Got any projects you’re proud of? This seems like a good place to mention them!

Next time, we can go back to talking about family history.

Thanks for reading Mightier Acorns! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
What Did George Know?

May 28, 2025

And how did he know it?
George, seated left, with his first wife, Mary Ann (seated, rt.), sons Everett and Clement (standing), and daughter, Mabel (seated, ctr.) – abt. 1889
George William Callin (1846-1921) was one of us: a genealogist.
He was active during a time when Americans enjoyed a newfound sense of optimism and possibility about their place in the world and when average men, like those in his family, were documenting their own lives as if they were the Great Men of history.
He published his research in a book called “The Callin Family History” in 1911, paying for the printing of an unknown number of copies bound in red leather. My grandfather received one of those copies, which found its way to me. In 2015, I published a replica of it on Lulu.com so any interested researchers could inspect it for themselves:
Learning From His Efforts
I have written before about some of the flaws in this book. George did not cite any of his sources, and he framed several claims about the origins of the Callin family as received wisdom from “our fathers,” who may or may not have had first- or even secondhand knowledge of the “facts” they passed on.
My early research grew out of George’s book. I used the facts he documented to hunt for census records using free Ancestry and FamilySearch records, and eventually expanded to a full Ancestry subscription that allowed me to fill in a lot of gaps using Newspapers.com and Fold3.
I re-published George’s book in 2015 as part of my project to update his work and provide source citations to support (or refute) his claims. Seven years later, I published my own imperfect document: an 800-page behemoth capturing up to seven generations of descendants of the man George referred to as “James 1st,” a Revolutionary War soldier who may or may not have been born in Ireland.
Who Did George Meet?
As I built my Callin Family History, it became clear that George didn’t use many official records. More likely, he got his information by speaking to his older relatives and relying on their memories. The closest he comes to referring to records is this statement early on:
Making deductions from the earliest known marriage record, that of Thomas
Callin, grandson of James 1 st , the order of descent would be like this…
Some hints suggest George corresponded with relatives who lived outside of Ohio, but I think he gathered most of the information for his book from relatives who returned to Ohio for annual family reunions, the first of which he hosted in 1906 at his home on “the corner of Pearl and Buttonwood avenue, Bowling Green, Ohio.”1 That article, and those documenting later reunions held in Akron in 19102 and in Bowling Green (again) in 1914, list the attendees, which I can compare with the contents of George’s book to see if I can tell who he met, and who got left out of his book.
(I was going to try to talk about that in this post, but it is turning out to be a deep, time-consuming rabbit hole involving a spreadsheet and multiple lists of 50-75 attendees… some of whom I also missed!)
The upshot is that George was acquainted with many of his cousins and their children who lived in Ohio.
An Elusive Irish Source
You might recall that I wrote about Dr. Fred Callin a while back, in The Angry Doctor. Dr. Fred was another family historian, and he was listed among the attendees of the 1906 Callin Family reunion, where, according to The Daily Sentinel Tribune:
Away off in Ireland one of the members of the Callin family and written and sent an interesting letter which was read aloud.
I speculate that the writer of this letter might be the person Dr. Fred visited the following year:
The Akron Beacon Journal, Akron, Ohio, Mon, Jul 1, 1907, Page 3.
I have been skeptical over the years of the family’s claims to Irish heritage, but these tantalizing clues suggest that they had something more solid than a vague legend of the Old Country. I just wish they had recorded their relationship.
Who George Did/Didn’t Know
While I can puzzle out who George met during his later years, I have to make some educated guesses about who he knew as a child. George knew his parents, William Callin and the former Elizabeth Berlin. He probably only received oral history from them. I know from the essay written by George’s daughter, Rosemary, in 1973, that Elizabeth was illiterate until her sons enlisted to fight in the Civil War. I assume that William was also illiterate, based on this description, which may have been written by his grandson, Byron H. Callin, in 18953:
“He was an industrious, hardy, persevering man, possessing great physical strength, but had only a limited knowledge of books. He had a mind of keen perception and sound judgment, and was well fitted for pioneer life.”
George did not know his grandfather, John Callin, who died of tuberculosis in 1835. He might not have met his grandmother, John’s widow, the former Elizabeth Simon. She lived with her daughter, Eliza (Callin) Ferguson, in Auburn, Indiana, in 1860, and may have moved to Auburn when the Ferguson family moved between 1840 and 1850. George was born in 1846, so depending on how long Elizabeth remained in Ohio, he may have known her at a time when he was old enough to have memories about her. George’s book is the only source I have found that tells us Elizabeth Simon’s maiden name.
George did include descendants of his aunt Eliza Ferguson in his book, so it is possible he met some of them at a reunion, or perhaps traveled to Auburn to visit them. He also included some limited information about his aunt Ann (Callin) Campbell and her surviving children.
His father’s oldest sister, Sarah (Callin) Scott (1801-1872), married and moved to Illinois with her husband before George was born, and no one in Ohio seems to have maintained contact with them. Finding them in Rockford, Winnebago County, Illinois, was one of my proudest accomplishments for the revised Callin Family History.
William had six cousins, some of whom are documented in George’s book. Only Thomas Callin remained in Milton Township, and he died three years before George was born. Thomas and his wife, Nancy (Burget) Callin, had ten children, but five of them survived childhood. Most died before George was born, and only the family of Thomas Jefferson (Jeff) Callin was well documented in George’s book. Jeff’s brother, Marquis, was believed to be dead by the time George compiled the book.
Three of Thomas’s siblings married Montgomerys, and we have been discussing them in our “Milton Township Diaspora” posts recently. But George did not seem to know about them at all. George only documented Thomas, Alec, and James; he did not mention Elizabeth, Sarah, or Hugh.
And that makes sense when you think about who would have still been around central Ohio after the Civil War. The Montgomery families (Elizabeth’s and Sarah’s children) were long gone by the time George began researching. And when we talk about the Iowa group (Alec, Hugh, James, and William’s sister, Margaret), they all moved in the decade before George’s birth and probably (mostly) died off.
To Be Continued…
I breezed past a ton of material in the last five paragraphs, and I do plan on giving more time to each of the families I mentioned. I learn more each time I revisit them, and it has been a while since I re-investigated the folks who moved to Iowa and then (mostly) died out. I have yet to find Alec’s descendants, and I know they ought to exist!
So, with all due gratitude to George for leaving his record in print, we will continue seeking to fill in the gaps.
1
Newspapers.com, The Daily Sentinel-Tribune, Bowling Green, Ohio, Thursday, August 16, 1906, “Callin Reunion” : accessed 26 May 2025.
2
Newspapers.com, The Akron Beacon Journal, Akron, Ohio, Thu, Aug 18, 1910, Page 2, Callins In Reunion : accessed 26 May 2025.
3
Commemorative Historical and Biographical Record of Wood County, Ohio , J.H. Beers, Chicago, 1897, pg 923-924.
The Three Acts of James Henry Opp

May 23, 2025

Some stories hide behind the records
Born on 11 March 1870, James Henry Opp grew up in the small town of Dansville in Livingston County, New York. His father, Jacob Edward Opp, was a veteran of the Civil War, and his mother was Mary Elizabeth Palmer, descended from a family of New Jersey shipbuilders.
Jacob and Mary had three children: Lillie May, James, and my great-great-grandmother, Emily Amelia Opp. Lillie May was born in 1868 and died in 1881 when she was 13. I don’t know what caused her death, but she was born in Brooklyn, New York, died in Paterson, New Jersey, and was buried in Green Mount Cemetery in Dansville.
The Opp family had moved to Paterson by 1880, and Jacob was working as a fireman on the railroad. Paterson was about a 270-mile journey from Dansville, but since Jacob worked for the railroad, and his roots were in Dansville, I imagine they made the trip back to visit family as often as they could.
Act I: A Family Man
James married his first wife, Evelene Darcy Stevens (1870-1940), on 14 Jul 1889 in Jersey City, Hudson County, New Jersey. Evelene was the daughter of Charles H Stevens (1840–1921) and Margaret “Maggie” Ferguson, and she was born on 20 Sep 1870 in Jersey City, Hudson County, New Jersey.
Evelene’s mother, Maggie, died when Evelene was young. Evelene grew up in the home of her father and stepmother, Carrie W (Palmer) Stevens (1856–1931). As it happens, Carrie Palmer was the youngest sister of James Opp’s mother, Mary Elizabeth (1837-1889).
James and Evelene had a son and a daughter in Jersey City, Richard Dana Opp (1890–1944) and Lillian Elisabeth (Opp) Johnson (1893–1943). Since there are no surviving records from the 1890 Census, we don’t know for sure where they lived, but in 1896, James resided on Pacific Avenue in Jersey City. We know this because The Jersey City News reported on their divorce. The article1 described James as “a commercial traveler” and alleged that Mrs. Opp spent the previous summer in Monroe, New York, where she and the “Fascinating Mr. Rogers” spent enough time together to create a scandal, which prompted James to sue her for a divorce.
James appears to have gained custody of the two children, and Evelene lived in her father’s home until she married George W Gifford (1868–1926) in Manhattan on 11 Aug 1900. The Giffords lived in Brooklyn until after 1915, when they moved to Newark, New Jersey. George died in 1926, and Evelyn (using that spelling of her name) resided in Essex County, New Jersey, until she died on 5 June 1940.
Act II: Till Death Do Us Part
The timing of James’s second marriage seems unusual, but I can only tell you what the records say. According to the records, he married Lillian Jones (1871–1915) on 20 January 1896 in Newark, Essex, New Jersey. You will notice that the report from The Jersey City News about the hearing of his divorce suit was dated 10 June 1896. I don’t know how to account for that, but they remained together for nearly twenty years.
It’s hard to know what sort of business James was in, but in 1900, he and his company went bankrupt. According to the official notice published in the Brooklyn Eagle,2 his partner, Arthur Grundy of Cape Town, South Africa, seems to have disappeared and left his partners, James Opp and Mortimer Clark, to the mercy of the U.S. bankruptcy court.
Meanwhile, James and Lillian had three children in Brooklyn, New York. Only their son, Julian Thayer Opp (1899–1978), survived to adulthood. Lucine J Opp was born in 1901, but died on 12 July 1902 and was buried in Sleepy Hollow, New York. They had another daughter named Emily Amelia, after James’s sister, on 23 February 1904. Emily was baptized in the United Methodist Church at ten years old, and she was only 12 when she died on 15 January 1917. She was buried in Sleepy Hollow, near her sister.
Sadly, Emily Amelia had outlived her mother, Lillian, who died in 1915. The records don’t tell us what kind of person Lillian was, but it is easy to imagine that James relied on her through these difficult events. And to lose their daughter so soon after losing his wife, we can only imagine how he felt in 1917.
Act III: The Girl from New York City
So, as we discussed last time, James found himself a 45-year-old widower in October 1915. His family lived in Newark, and James ran an export business in New York. I don’t know what circumstances put a middle-aged widower in the orbit of a 20-year-old mother of two who was living in the Bronx, married to a machinist, but we surmise that he married Jessica Viola (Owens) Slaker and adopted her two children before moving to Elmira, Chemung County, New York, where their blended family included Jesse’s parents and sister.
We don’t have all the records we would expect to tell us this part of the story, but we do know that James and Jessica had a son, James Henry Opp, Jr., who was born on 13 October 1917. We also know that Jessica’s first husband, Stanley Slaker (aka Slicinski), had been listed as “married with two children” in June of that year on his World War I draft registration, and that he enlisted in the U.S. Army on 11 October, two days before his wife delivered her son to her new husband.
Whatever happened in 1917, early 1918 saw a big business opportunity for James. The Elmira Star-Gazette reported on 30 January 19183 that a newly incorporated “Aluminum War Manufacturing Company, Inc.” was founded in Albany, and would absorb the National Aluminum Works of Elmira, as well as the Aluminum Distributing Company and Toyphone Company, both of New York City. James H. Opp was named as a vice president in the new company, under the president, John E. Potter.
In March 1919, the same paper reported that James H. Opp had purchased the home of Myer Friendly at 510 West Church Street and moved there from Newark. Presumably, that is the home we see the Opp family living in on the 1920 Census. In May, it was reported that James had purchased the interests of Mr. Potter and that the company would undergo an expansion. His son, Richard, was reportedly “in charge of the operations at the plant.”
Things took a turn in April 1921, when stockholders began to question the inventory and whereabouts of Richard D. Opp.4 Within a few days, James was ousted and his family left Elmira, deeding the Friendly house to the Aluminum Ware Company and returning the home’s furniture to creditors to satisfy their debts.5
The extended family relocated to Elizabeth in Union County, New Jersey, where James’s occupation was listed as “Salesman; Electrical.” He and Jessica had a daughter there in 1926. Not long after his father-in-law, Walter Owens, died in 1933, the family moved into Newark, where they remained until James died in 1941.
Epilogue
James died on 1 August 1941 and was buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Westchester County, New York. Jessica stayed in New Jersey until around 1962, and she spent her later years in California.
For all of the information we do have about the life of James Henry Opp and his family, there is so much left unsaid. Was he the villain or the victim in these stories of businesses and marriages gone wrong? How well did all of these people living in his blended family get along? Were they supportive of each other, or were there tensions and dramas that were left out of the story?
As I said several times, the timing of the records suggests that James and his wives did not have conventional courtships. He married Lillian before it is clear he was divorced from Evelene, and one interpretation of his marriage to Jessica is that he stole her from her first husband. His various business ventures imply that he could be aggressive and took risks, but there isn’t necessarily any evidence that he did anything wrong.
All we can do sometimes is keep digging and assume the best.
1
Newspapers.com, The Jersey City News, Jersey City, New Jersey, Wed, Jun 10, 1896, Page 2, Divorce Suit Heard Before a Special Master Today.
2
Newspapers.com, Brooklyn Eagle, Brooklyn, New York, Thu, May 24, 1900, Page 17, Opp & Grundy bankruptcy notice.
3
Newspapers.com, Elmira Star-Gazette, Elmira, New York, Wed, Jan 30, 1918, Page 13, “Aluminum War Co., Million Dollar Firm To Be Located Here.“
4
Newspapers.com, Elmira Star-Gazette, Elmira, New York, Tue, Apr 19, 1921, Page 9, “Sockholders’ Representative Takes Charge of The Affairs At Aluminum Company Factory.“
5
Newspapers.com, Elmira Star-Gazette, Elmira, New York, Fri, Apr 22, 1921, Page 7, “James H. Opp Turns Over Property To Aluminum Company As Protection.”
The Davidsons Arrive in Oregon

May 21, 2025

The Milton Township Diaspora (part 3)

When we last talked about Sarah (Montgomery) Davidson and her family, they set out from Fulton County, Indiana, and took to the Oregon Trail in 1852:

Sarah and Henry Davidson took their four children and their adopted niece, Sarah Farrell, on the trip; we have only talked about Sarah Farrell’s life in Oregon.

But the Davidsons established themselves in what is now Halsey, Linn County, Oregon, and had two more children after arriving there. Sadly, Frances Mary Davidson (1850-1855), the youngest Davidson to make the trip from Indiana to Oregon, died soon after her two youngest siblings were born.

There are a lot of stories to explore, but here is a brief introduction to the Davidson children:

Lucretia Murphy

The eldest of their children, Rebecca Lucretia (Davidson) Murphy (1842-1917), married Henderson Warren Murphy (1835-1918), the son of John Eccles Murphy, the captain of the wagon train that brought the Davidsons to Oregon. Henderson and Lucretia farmed and raised livestock in Oregon and Washington Territory, and raised seven children. They eventually settled back in South Lebanon, Linn County, Oregon.

William Davidson

William Montgomery Davidson (1845-1939) married Sarah Rosetta “Rose” Morris (1848–1928), another Linn County neighbor whose family came to Oregon in 1853. They had seven children, six of whom survived to adulthood.

Theodore Davidson

Theodore Bruce Davidson (1848-1932) had eight children with his first wife, Margaret Ann Work (1855-1915), two of whom grew up to become doctors. He married his second wife, Margaret Ellen (Waggoner) Kizer, in 1917. Theodore was a dairy farmer, but he retired from his dairy farm after his parents died and he inherited the family homestead.

Thurston Davidson

Records say that Samuel Thurston Davidson (1853-1889) was born on the Oregon Trail, in the Idaho Territory, possibly in what is now Utah. He married Susanna Elizabeth Briggs (1850–1910) about 1878. They had a son and a daughter before his unexpected death at age 35.

Mary Malson Cunningham

Named for her aunt and her grandmother, Mary Elizabeth Davidson (1854-1929) was the only Davidson child born on the family farm after arriving in Oregon. She married her first husband, Charles W Malson (b. 1845), around 1874. Little is known about Charles, and they divorced in 1894. They had five children, but two of them may have died around 1880.

Mary’s second husband was Richard Ross Cunningham (1849–1926), a widower who had lost his wife and two children in 1891.

Oregon Pioneers

Sometimes it feels like great Historical Events overwhelm the small human events that make up our family histories. The Oregon Trail story is cemented into the American Experience, in part thanks to the old Oregon Trail computer game.

The game that spawned so many memes.

As evidence that this was the largest event in the lives of this particular family, almost every one of their obituaries mentions the journey to Oregon, and most refer to them as “pioneers” with some reference to the famous Trail, by date if not by name.

Most of the Davidsons’ descendants remained in Oregon, though a few exceptions spread out across the neighboring states, into Washington, or down into California. One of Sarah Murphy’s sons, Elbert George Wells (1890–1961), suffered from lung trouble and moved to the drier environment of Imperial Valley in California. There he married Loreto Villa-Escusa (1895–2000). Three generations of their family spent time in both Calexico and Mexicali, straddling the U.S.-Mexican border.

One of the most adventurous descendants was Elbert’s sister, Goldie Ruth Wells (1893–1979). She became a missionary to the Belgian Congo, where she assisted in establishing the mission station at Mondombe in 1919. She was decorated by the King of Belgium with the Order of Leopold II in 1937 for her long and outstanding service in the Congo. When she was in America, she was a popular guest speaker in churches throughout the Midwest and the Pacific Northwest.1

We Are All Post-scripts

I think it’s unlikely that any of the grandchildren of Henry and Sarah Davidson had any memory of Indiana, let alone of Milton Township, Ohio. Sarah was only ten years old when her father, Caleb Montgomery, left Milton Township. She probably carried vague memories of some of her cousins, but almost certainly had no memory of the Callin family. And yet, six or seven generations later, her descendants are just as related to James Callin as I am.

Henry died on 19 February 1894 at age 75 and was buried in the Pugh Cemetery in Shedd, Linn County. Sarah remained in Halsey until moving to South Lebanon, Linn County, before 1910. She died there on 8 May 1918 at age 93 and was buried near her husband.

And in all likelihood, little memory of their lives before the Oregon Trail survived them.

1

Yocum, Edith Eberle, (1899-1966), They went to Africa: biographies of missionaries of the Disciples of Christ, United Christian Missionary Society, Missionary Education Department, Indianapolis, IN, 1945; biography on page 40.
Finding the Children

May 16, 2025
Seeking unknown children can be a roundabout task

Last time I talked about this family, I pointed out that Adam Smith (1792-1847) and Experience Garretson (1800-1897) probably had more children than were named in the 1850 Census, based on the 1840 count of their household:
Today, I want to build the case that I found one of them: Harriet Zerelda (Smith) Compton. Like the rest of her siblings, she lived in Floyd County, Indiana.

A Recap

The Smith family lived in Greenville Township, Floyd County, Indiana, a few miles from Louisville, Kentucky. The document that forms the foundation for our argument is the 1850 Census1, which names Experience and four children (Philip, Jacob, Mary, and Jane). The 1840 Census2 (which only named the head of the household, Adam Smith) counted the family members, and I have filled in the names that we know, along with birth/death dates that I’ve been able to dig up:

1840 Smith household:
1. Male, born between 1811 and 18203
2. Male, born between 1826 and 1830
3. Female, born between 1826 and 1830
4. A second female, born between 1826 and 1830
5. Female, born between 1831 and 1835
6. Philip William Smith (1831–1901)
7. Jacob Smith (b. 1833)
8. Mary M (Smith) Brown (1836–1929)
(Remember, the youngest daughter, Jane (Smith) Frederick (1840-1916), was born just after the 1840 census was enumerated.)

Isabella (Smith) Miller (1823-1909)

We talked about Isabella last time; her death record named her parents as Adam and Experience, but there is a question about the timing of her birth. (If her death record and headstone have the correct date, then Experience might not be her mother.) For now, we may assume she is #3 on the list above, since she was married in December 1841 and ought to be in this household.

(Since drafting this post, I recorded my thoughts about Isabella’s birth date and the possible implications on Adam’s WikiTree profile. More words at that link!)

Harriet Z. (Smith) Compton (1826-1865)

The journey to find Harriet began by poring over the documentary evidence for the biography of Mary M (Smith) Brown. Mary Smith married George W Brown (1833–1907) in 1856, and they had a daughter, Olie Brown (1857-1901), who lived with her parents all her life and worked as a music teacher. They moved a few times, ending up in Fremont, Colorado, where both George and Olie died.

As you can see from those dates, George and Olie died long before Mary did, so I was curious who provided the information on Mary’s 1929 death certificate:

Indiana death certificate for Mary (Smith) Brown – 5 Nov 1929

I had no idea who “Hattie Devol” was, or where to begin looking for her, but I kept digging and ran across her name again, in a newspaper snippet that mentioned Olie Brown:

MISS HATTIE DEVOL, Miss Olie Brown, Miss Daisy and Mr. Merrill Frederick, of New Albany, who have been spending several days in the city [Louisville], have returned to their homes.

~The Courier-Journal, Louisville, Kentucky, Sun, Jun 13, 1886, Page 6

I assumed that since Olie (Mary’s daughter), Daisy, and Merrill (Jane’s children) were cousins, Hattie might be the daughter of one of the other missing Smith children. I created a new person profile for her on Ancestry and started collecting evidence to show who her family members were, hoping to find a thread that led back to the Smiths.

Harriet Compton “Hattie” Devol (1868–1944) was the daughter of George Henry Devol (1839–1918) and Eliza L Compton (1845–1919). That made her 11 years younger than Olie Brown, and about the same age as Merrill Frederick. A little more digging revealed that Eliza Compton’s parents were Banister Compton (1819–1872) and Harriet Z Smith (1826–1865).

I have yet to discover any direct documentary evidence that Harriet was the daughter of Adam Smith and Experience, but I can’t imagine why Hattie Devol would be completing Mary (Smith) Brown’s death certificate if they weren’t related.

That would probably make Harriet Z. (Smith) Compton #4 on that 1840 Census above.

The Search Continues

Another lead or two should help us find out more. There are at least two more names to find, plus Jacob Smith (b. 1833) only appears in the 1850 Census, so we need to track him down.

Time to go double-check for informants and newspaper clippings.

1

1850 United States Federal Census, Place: Greenville, Floyd, Indiana; Roll: 145; Page: 464a.

2

1840 United States Federal Census, Place: Greenville, Floyd, Indiana; Roll: 79; Page: 153; Family History Library Film: 0007724.

3

This oldest male might not be a child of Adam and Experience—he was born before their marriage in 1825. He could be a younger brother of either Adam or Experience, a servant or farmhand, or another relative taken in by the Smiths. We don’t have enough information to speculate, yet.
Tell Us About the Girl From New York City

May 14, 2025
Most of her story remains underground

The Opp family is my mother’s maternal grandmother’s maternal side—and if that doesn’t emphasize “maternal” enough, I think of them as being on the Opp-osite side of the tree from my Callin family.

(Opening with a Dad joke of that magnitude should rebalance things, don’t you think?)

I’ve tried to write about this family before, but I kept getting stuck, as you’ll see, so I decided to start with the people who presented the biggest mysteries and roadblocks. Perhaps if we talk through it together, I will find it easier to work my way back through the rest of the family.
Welcome to all of our new subscribers! Mightier Acorns doesn’t have a paywall, but appreciates free or paid subscribers.

Emily Amelia (Opp) Frey was my 2nd-great-grandmother—one of “My Sixteen”—and her brother’s family poses several research challenges. We’ll get to him, but first:

Finding Jessica

Jessica Viola Owens was the third of four daughters of Walter William Owens (1850–1933) and Charlotte E Clarke (b. 1868), born on 1 August 1896 in Manhattan, New York City. Charlotte was born in England and arrived in New York on 17 October 1888 aboard the SS Ludgate Hill. Charlotte and Walter married the day after her arrival, on 18 October 1888.

Just over a year later, Janet Emily Owens was born on 9 November 1889. Florence Clark Owens was born on 12 January 1891, followed five years later by Jessie, who remained the baby of the family until she was nine years old. Then she was supplanted when Gladys Charlotte was born on 11 November 1905.

The Owens family lived in The Bronx, and they probably benefited from the newly opened subway system, the world-famous IRT.

By Epicgenius – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=99337648

Jessie’s First Marriage

This is where things became difficult, because the evidence tells me things that make me question whether the facts are correct, because the situations they imply are unusual.

Marriage license index records tell me that Jessica Owens married Stanley Slaker (1891–1972) on 9 May 1911 in Manhattan. She was 14 years old, and Stanley was 19. That seems young to me, but it’s consistent with the later records.

Stanley was a puzzle, because it turns out he also appears under the name Stanley Slicinski in some of his military records. It’s not that odd for people to use an Anglicized name; it just seemed odd that he could be found under both names. After comparing details across several military enlistment and draft registration records to be sure, records showing his different names but with a matching, precise birth date (27 October 1981) and his World War I enlistment date (11 October 1917) led me to believe they are showing me the same person.

On 5 Jun 1917, Stanley Slicinski signed his WWI Draft Registration card. He listed his residence at 742 East 217th St., Bronx, New York City, and his marital status: Married with 2 children. New York birth index records tell me that Stanley W Slaker was born on 18 Oct 1912 in Manhattan, and Dorothy Slaker was born on 21 Aug 1914 in Bronx, New York City.

Normally, I think men were exempted from the draft if they were married with dependents, but as I said, Stanley enlisted in the U.S. Army on 11 October, just over 4 months after registering. I suspect this is when Stanley and Jessica separated, because by the time the 1920 Census was taken, Jessica, Stanley Jr., and Dorothy were living in the household of James Henry Opp… and all three of them were listed with Opp as their surname.

What makes things difficult for me is that Stanley Sr. doesn’t show up in census records after his marriage. I only get his military records—the most recent of which was his 1942 World War II Draft registration, which said he was living at 711 East 231 St., Bronx, with someone named Jesse Slaker at that same address. I considered the possibility that our Stanley died in the war, leaving Jessica widowed to marry James Opp, but as I said, the later military records have precisely matching dates, and it’s pretty clear Stanley lived until 1972.

So something happened to his marriage between 1917 and 1920.

James Opp’s Third marriage

James Henry Opp found himself a 45-year-old widower in October 1915. He had been married to his second wife, Lillian Jones (1871–1915), for 19 years, and their youngest child was a ten-year-old daughter, Emily Amelia Opp. Emily was named after her aunt, my 2nd-great-grandmother.

The Opp family lived in Newark, and James ran an export business in New York. I don’t know what circumstances put a middle-aged widower in the orbit of a 20-year-old mother of two who was living in the Bronx, married to a machinist, but these are the facts I have. In chronological order:

18 Oct 1912: Stanley W Slaker was born.

21 Aug 1915: Dorothy Slaker was born.

6 Oct 1915: Lillian (Jones) Opp died.

13 Jan 1917: Emily A Opp died at age 13.

11 Oct 1917: Stanley Slaker (Sr.) enlisted in the Army.

13 Oct 1917: James Henry Opp, Jr. was born.

1920: The Opp family appears in the census, living in Elmira, Chemung County, New York.

10 Apr 1926: Jessica Viola Opp was born.

1930: The Opp family appears in the census, living in Elizabeth, Union County, New Jersey.

That 1920 Opp household tells me a lot. It includes: James and Jessie Opp (49 and 24, respectively) and Julian Opp (21, James and Lillian’s son), Walter and Charlotte Owens (69 and 51, Jessie’s parents), Gladys Owens (14, Jessie’s sister), and three children under 10: Stanley Opp (7), Dorothy Opp (5), and James Opp (2).

I found no marriage record for James and Jessie, but I think the unavoidable conclusion is that they combined their families in 1917. The 1930 household is not much different from the 1920 household. Charlotte Owens is not there, though Walter is listed as “married” and not “widowed.” I haven’t figured out what happened to Charlotte yet. The other major addition is 3-year-old Jessica. And in 1940, James (70), Jessica (43), and Jessica (13) lived in Newark.

If you look at the timeline and assume that James adopted Stanley Jr. and Dorothy, the facts all make sense. That timeline raises a lot of questions. It’s clear that James Opp Jr. was conceived soon after Emily Amelia died, and the timing of Stanley Sr.’s enlistment suggests that he may have learned that his wife’s third child was not his, probably during that summer. I always say I don’t like to judge people without knowing the facts, but somebody in this equation made some cruel choices.

Whatever the situation, I doubt Stanley Sr. was happy about these events.

An Opp-ilogue

James Henry Opp died on 1 Aug 1941 and was buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Westchester County, New York. Jessica stayed in New Jersey until around 1962, when Mrs. Jessica V Opp appears in Los Angeles County, California. She lived in Thousand Oaks for 20 years and moved to Lompoc in 1986.

Jessica was 90 years old when she died, survived by sons James Opp of Camarillo, CA; Stanley Opp of New Jersey; Dorothy Campbell of New Jersey; and Jessica Whitesell of Solvang, CA.

I still have a lot of questions, and there are several more stories to tell about James Henry Opp’s life. But at least the story of the Girl from New York City seems to have had a happy ending.
A WikiTree Milestone

May 9, 2025

Reflections upon reaching 5,000 edits
I knew the big round number was creeping up on me, but I didn’t expect to see it when it happened. I tend to go for several weeks without editing, then add a flurry of full biographies for a whole family group.
But…
Tad’s Contributions page
Major v Minor
Everyone’s approach to editing a wiki is different. Some people are more comfortable adding one fact at a time. Save, read, edit; view, save, read, edit—building one page might mean a few dozen edits until they get it “right” and move on.
I prefer to gather all the facts and evidence, draft as complete a biography as I can, and put my source citations in order before I even begin to create a page. I still end up finding minor edits to fix, but for me, one page usually means 3 to 5 edits.
Neither approach is “right” or “wrong,” and I am just grateful when other people add even a small edit to a page I’m interested in.
A Little Preview
You will notice that edit #5,000 was on a new page (created as edit #4,999) for the first wife of James Henry Opp. I worked on my Opp family extensively about a decade ago, before getting on WikiTree, and I keep trying to work my way back in their direction. They need to be added to the wiki, but there have been some challenges.
James H. Opp was an interesting character and his biography took several twists and turns: an early divorce, a bankruptcy, allegations of embezzlement (not by that name, because they were unproven allegations and that would have been libel), and a total of three marriages with 2, 3, and 3 children (plus one adoption) with each wife, respectively. My standard is to try to develop as complete a biography as possible for each wife and child, and since the family spent time in New Jersey, New York City, and Upstate New York, the records are scattered and hard to find.
But once I get all of that done, I will start climbing those Opp Wavetops, and there are some interesting folks up there!
To the Next Milestone!
The Name of His Other Leg

May 7, 2025

Spoiler: it was also called “Smith”

I can’t help myself.

The focus of today’s post is the Smith family, so my brain immediately and urgently goes to Mary Poppins:

Since Adam Smith died in 1847, I don’t think he’ll be coming after me anytime soon.

I’ve spent some time lately updating the WikiTree profiles for my wife’s family, starting from her great-grandmother, Aletha Frederick (Putnam) Martin (1899-1981). And Aletha’s maternal grandmother was born, Jane Eliza Smith (1840-1916), so that’s how my brain got to Mary Poppins. Q.E.D.

You can find Jane in the bottom-right corner of Aletha’s chart:

ancestry chart for Aletha Frederick (Putnam) Martin

“Trust but verify” – with less “trust”

Whenever I show you a profile on WikiTree, you can assume that I have at least some information about that person’s parents. Jane’s profile opens with this paragraph:

Jane Eliza “Jennie” Smith was the youngest child of Adam Smith (1792–1847)1 and Experience Garretson (1800–1897), born on 26 Jun 1840 in Galena, Floyd, Indiana. Her father died when she was seven years old, and she grew up in a household run by her mother in Greenville Township.

As sources, I cited the 1850 and 1860 census records showing Jane and her siblings living in a household headed by Experience Smith. But in my Ancestry profile for Jane (Smith) Frederick, I have several sources telling me who her parents and other ancestors were. I did not include them because I have not had a chance to verify these sources. (As it is, I feel bad for putting the names and vital dates for Adam and Experience in Jane’s profile without a source, but I rationalize that eventually I will get around to doing that when I build their profiles.)

In this case, the sources I haven’t verified yet are from the Daughters of the American Revolution Lineage books. They do not include original source citations, so I don’t know how accurate the information is, and therefore, I should not “trust” it. However, the information required to complete a DAR application is supposed to be supported by evidence, so I treat the information as a lead to finding the original documents.

For this Smith family, that means accepting the Ancestry hints (so I have leads and know where they came from) and looking for corroborating evidence. Once I have confirmed what I need to build a new biography, I’ll create a profile for Jane’s parents.2

Defined By Absence

Jane (Smith) Frederick’s father died in 1847. Since the U.S. Census didn’t start listing everyone in a household by name until 1850, this means that we will have to find less direct ways to confirm whether the records we find are for the right family.

Not only is the name “Adam Smith” very common, but the family lived in Floyd County, Indiana, which is not a distant, rural outpost where we can assume everyone with the same name is related. Floyd County is just across the Indiana-Kentucky state line, on the North and West side of the Ohio River. You should be able to spot New Albany and Greenville on this map:

That means we should be looking for records in both states and in newspapers based in Louisville. (There are a surprising number of references to the author of The Wealth of Nations in Louisville during the three decades our Adam Smith ought to have been living in the area.)

Since the 1850 Census puts his family in Greenville, it is reasonable to assume that the 1840 Census for an Adam Smith in Greenville Township is probably the correct family. Here’s how the known family members from 1850 would fit into the 1840 household3:

Adam Smith (1792-1847)

Experience Garretson (1800–1897)

unknown – possible son or servant, or other relative

unknown – possible son

Isabella (Smith) Miller (1823-1909) – m. 28 Dec 1841

unknown – possible daughter

unknown – possible daughter

Philip William Smith (1831–1901)

Jacob Smith (b. 1833)

Mary M (Smith) Brown (1836–1929)

If you compared this to the 1850 household4, you may have noticed that the document names Experience and four children (Philip, Jacob, Mary, and Jane)—but not Isabella. Isabella Miller’s 1909 death certificate gave us her maiden name and named her parents. The informant was her daughter, Anna (Miller) Wheeler.

The discovery of Isabella presents a couple of problems. First, the birth date given on her death record and her headstone (3 Sep 1823) makes her about three years older than the oldest girl counted in the 1840 Census. Second, depending on which birthdate is correct, she might or might not be the daughter of Experience (Garretson) Smith.

An Either/Or Puzzle

Either Isabella (and her family) got her birth date wrong, or someone else was her mother.

Floyd County marriage records show a man named Adam Smith marrying Elizabeth Kallahan/Hallahan on 9 June 1821. An undated grave marker exists for an “Elizabeth Smith” (inscribed “Mother” on the top) in West Haven Cemetery in New Albany, Floyd County, Indiana5. This evidence doesn’t “prove” that Elizabeth (Kallahan) Smith was Isabella’s mother. It doesn’t even prove that Elizabeth (Kallahan) Smith existed, but I have been unable to rule that possibility out.

If the family misremembered the year Isabella was born, then she could have been born (as the 1840 census indicates) in 1826, after Adam married Experience.

There is another possibility, since the 1830 Census has an Adam Smith family in New Albany. That record counts one Female born between 1816-1820, one Female born between 1821-1825, and two children, one Male and one Female, born between 1825-1830. If Isabella was born in 1823, she could have appeared on the 1830, and not been recorded on the 1840 census. (She married Jacob Miller in 1841 in Floyd County.)

Either way, the family has several unknown children for us to find, and we need better evidence to tell Adam’s story.

To Be Continued…

At this point, I will need to go digging for more information about Jane (Smith) Frederick’s siblings, especially the ones who were in the household in 1830 and 1840. This will require chasing down obituaries for everyone, hoping to catch a name that isn’t already known, or hoping to find a marriage or death record that names the parents. (Which will probably be horribly misspelled, since Ancestry’s hints haven’t already suggested them.)

But that’s what keeps us going, right? Always another mystery, just out of reach.

1

This is NOT Adam Smith (1723-1790), the Scottish economist who sired capitalism.

2

Update: I did end up building a profile for Adam, and found “orphaned” profiles for him and his parents, so I “adopted” and updated them: Adam Smith (1792-1847)

3

1840 United States Federal Census, Place: Greenville, Floyd, Indiana; Roll: 79; Page: 153; Family History Library Film: 0007724.

4

1850 United States Federal Census, Place: Greenville, Floyd, Indiana; Roll: 145; Page: 464a.

5

“Elizabeth Smith” Memorial on Find-A-Grave.
Devout: Were Our Ancestors "Godly"?

May 2, 2025

Thinking about Hermeneutics in genealogy
Stop and think before you read on:
Did you answer the title question based on what you think “godly” means, or did you answer based on what your ancestors thought “godly” meant? Once you’ve fixed your answer in your mind, read on!
The question in the title isn’t really about your ancestors. It’s about you and how you (inevitably, like a human being) project your understanding of the world onto them.
Branching Fields of Study
Genealogy is a field of study that sometimes demands that you become an expert in unexpected, additional areas. You may not be mechanically inclined, but learning about your great-grandfather’s career on the railroad may require studying a bit about running trains. Understanding your great-aunt’s medical career may lead you to digging up turn-of-the-century medical texts. And it never hurts to learn more about farming.
But religion raises the difficulty. A while ago, I talked about how knowing about your ancestors’ faiths can be both useful and difficult:
Learning about the faith of your ancestors can be tricky because you not only have to find out what religion your ancestors (most likely) practiced, but you have to figure out what that religion taught, what the disagreements and divisions within it were, and where your ancestors aligned with those divisions. This will never be obvious.
How someone practiced their religion can either explain or be explained by their choices, so you sometimes have to dig a little deeper to understand what choices they were facing. There is a name for this kind of academic inquiry.
What does “Hermeneutics” mean?
Well, here’s the definition:
That might require some unpacking.
I am an atheist/secular humanist now, but I was raised in a Southern Baptist family in suburban Arizona. Most people who learn I am an atheist now don’t realize that I read the Bible extensively in my youth and still read and study religion and religious history today. Their assumption that “atheist” means “ignorant of the scriptures” is a common mistake and is an example of one way we project our assumptions onto others.
Growing up, my evangelical Christian community was “us,” and everyone else was “the world.” I remember attending week-long seminars in the summer explaining the flaws of the other religions that “claimed to be Christian” and why (in our view) they weren’t. One year, we spent one night each week on a different sect. We covered Catholicism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, “The Occult” (because it was the 1980s and we were in the middle of the Satanic Panic), and two nights discussing the Church of Latter Day Saints.1
When I learned the word “hermeneutics,” I was horrified by the thought that my faith might be treated as just another point of view, the same as these other faiths that I had been taught to avoid and fear. It was offensive to imply that they were all equally valid, academically. I’ve outgrown that impulse, but I remember it, and I recognize it when other people are confronted with thinking about religion (especially their own) in a neutral, academic way for the first time.
Common Southern Baptist hermeneutics for interpreting scriptures might sound familiar to American Christians. We called ourselves a “Bible-believing faith” and emphasized that the Bible was the literal Word of God. We talked a lot about interpreting the Bible “literally,” but we downplayed the fact that none of us were reading the original text in the original languages.
Not being “orthodox” was very important to us, as well; we made a point of putting our conscience above any “earthly authority” such as a priest. Our pastors were sometimes more educated than we were, but were expected not to hold that against us. “Orthodoxy” vs “Heterodoxy” is just one fault line that can divide believers even within the same faith or sect.
Two hundred years ago, whether members were “abolitionist” or not could be so divisive that groups might separate violently—one such conflict led to the establishment of the Southern Baptist Convention in 1845.
These days, “progressive” vs “conservative” may be a more prevalent divider. One of my favorite writers on the subject, Fred Clark (known as The Slacktivist), has a handy post, “Shellfish Hermeneutics,” that illustrates some of the problems that even people of the same faith can have in understanding their hermeneutics.
The Faith of Our Fathers
Both of my grandfathers were ordained Southern Baptist ministers, but they were very different in their outlook. Grandpa Bob was a public school teacher who retired in the mid-1980s and went on to perform weddings at my Aunt Vickie’s bed and breakfast in his later years. In contrast, I wrote extensively about Grandpa Russ’s fiery iconoclastic approach to faith about ten years ago:
The fact that everyone in the family and both grandfathers were Southern Baptists led me to take for granted that “we have always been Southern Baptists.” Only later did I learn that neither Bob nor Russ was raised in a church like mine. When my mom read an earlier version of “A Fire in the Desert,” she pointed out that she and her mother had urged Grandpa Russ to ‘get saved’ – and before she died, Grandma implied to me that she threatened to leave him in the 1950s if he didn’t stop drinking and join a church.2
Grandpa Bob talked warmly about his family. In his view, they had been respected and well-to-do for several generations: teachers, businessmen, and “godly,” meaning that whatever church they were associated with, grandpa saw them as reverent believers. Grandpa Russ, in contrast, talked about his large family, then living mostly in Kentucky and Arkansas, as “not very good people” – meaning that they had problems with drinking and smoking3 and (when no other adults were around) infidelity. And yet, of all the ancestors I’ve studied, Grandpa Russ’s people had more people with “Reverend” prefixed to their names than any other branch.
As I began to build my genealogical knowledge, I found references to the different faiths that my forefathers practiced. Their names didn’t tell me much about their beliefs: United Brethren, Presbyterian, Disciples of Christ, Quakers, German Reformed Church, and later, Methodist. But as I studied the Protestant Reformation and the waves of revivalist movements that swept the early United States, I learned about some of the deep divisions that plagued these different groups.
Some of these were critical, opposing philosophical differences involving the nature of free will. Some were more symbolic, like how and when people should be baptized. “Infant baptism with confirmation later in life” v. “a commitment to raise a child to be baptized at some later time when their conscience moved them” seems like a cosmetic difference to some people, but it meant the world to Granpa Russ.
Tips For Parsing Your Religious History
You don’t need to attend a seminary to figure out what your grandparents believed. That might not help, anyway, since even a very orthodox religion will have differences of opinion and interpretation, and your folks could be on either side of any controversy. You might be lucky enough to find writings that give you an insight into what they believed.
More often, you will get the name of their pastor and/or their congregation in an obituary. If you have the pastor’s name and a date range, you can search in newspaper databases or look for them in Google Books/Internet Archive-like sources, and see if they left writings that describe their teachings.
You probably noticed my Wikipedia links to the different denominations above—I find Wikipedia is a great starting point for getting a neutral overview of the general history of a church. The bibliography on those articles can lead you to more sources; I like to look there for books with deeper information, or for collected writings by clergy of that denomination.
If you are new to the study of religion in general, you could do worse than reviewing the Crash Course series on Religion:

On Open Mindedness
In my last post, about the career of Dr. Carolyn Putnam, I talked about the conundrum of honoring her as an independent professional woman at the turn of the 20th Century while also not lending credence to the field she worked in. Evidence-based medicine has discredited much of homeopathic medicine since Dr. Putnam’s time, but a lot of people still practice homeopathic medicine. Since you don’t know how your audience may react to having you call it “discredited,” you want to avoid bringing that up unless it is necessary to understand Dr. Putnam’s story.
It is vital not to let your personal beliefs shape the research that you do. Your job is to follow the evidence where it leads and document your findings. Thinking critically may require you to ask “What does that mean?” and “How do I know that?” several times before you begin to make sense of the information. Take your time to question your assumptions.
When you write about what you learn, stick to what you can prove. If you can’t prove a point or you have to make an educated guess, make it clear in your writing which parts of the story you are speculating about.
There will be times when you must record thoughts and feelings attributed to your ancestors that you would rather erase or condemn. You might uncover something painful, and someone may be hurt or offended by what you have learned. Stick to what you can prove, and make it clear when you are expressing an opinion (either yours or your ancestors).
The best advice I can offer is to avoid putting judgments into your writing unless necessary. Stick to the facts, and be open to learning more about the nuances of the human experience.
Be patient with each other—even with the dead.
1
I am aware that since 2018, they have officially preferred to be called “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” or “the Church” for short. They also prefer their members to be referred to as “Latter-day Saints” or “members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” rather than “Mormons” or “LDS”. I try to respect that preference in my writing, and I encourage “the Church” to show that same respect to others.
2
I don’t know whether she did—that’s just something she told me once.
3
Smoking was considered an offensive practice and a grave sin in my family. Calling someone a “smoker” was almost always shorthand for saying they had no class, no impulse control, and no moral compass.
The Progressive Doctor Putnam

April 30, 2025

Dr. Carolyn Elizabeth Putnam (1857-1917)

Carolyn Elizabeth “Carrie” Putnam was the daughter of George C Putnam (1835-1873) and Elizabeth Ann Force (1836-1918), born in Jan 1857. She grew up in Rochester, Monroe County, New York, until her father moved the family to Brownstown, Wayne County, Michigan, to start a new business around 1870. George died in 1873, and by 1875, Elizabeth had returned with Carrie and her brother, Charles, to Rochester.1

If this family sounds familiar at all, it might be because I wrote about George and Elizabeth’s families not long ago:

There seems to be an endless supply of these Mightier Acorns, but that’s up to our free and paid subscribers.

A Biography

Carrie was the sister of my wife’s 2nd-great-grandfather, Charles W. Putnam. (I guess that makes her “Sixteen-adjacent”?) She received her early education at Rochester Free Academy, where she was admitted in 1878, at 21 years of age. She most likely attended classes in the Academy Building, which was built in 1872-73 and is still used as office space today.

Academy Building, Rochester, N.Y.

Carrie and her mother lived in the home of her uncle, I.F. Force, in Rochester. She taught school in Rochester in 1880 and 1882.In 1887, she was hired to teach at the Karnes school (which was located at Fourth and Troost) in Kansas City, Missouri.

After working as a teacher for several years, Carolyn returned to school to become a doctor practicing homeopathic medicine. She graduated from the New York Homoeopathic Medical College and Hospital in 1886, before moving to Kansas City to teach. She later graduated from the Kansas City Homeopathic Medical College in 1897. The Kansas City Homeopathic Medical College merged with Hahnemann Medical College of the Kansas City University to form Kansas City Hahnemann Medical College in 1902. Dr. Putnam was on the Kansas City Hahnemann Medical College faculty in 1904-1905, listed as one of five lecturers on materia medica. The school became the Southwest School of Medicine and Hospital in 1915 and closed in 1916.

Carolyn died on 2 Apr 1917 in Kansas City, Jackson County, Missouri, due to complications from an inner ear infection. She was buried in Mount Hope Cemetery in Rochester, Monroe County, New York. In her will, she left $10 to her mother and the rest of her estate to her brother, requesting that Charles attend to their mother’s needs. Her obituary appeared in The Kansas City Times on 10 Apr 1917.

A Career and a Conundrum

The field of homeopathic medicine was established in 1796 by a German physician, Samuel Hahnemann. If you click through to that Wikipedia article, you should be able to learn some of the history of the field. If no one has altered the text, it should tell you that the founding beliefs behind homeopathy have been discredited since the mid-19th century. The practice of evidence-based medicine—called “Allopathic medicine” by Dr. Hahnemann—was relatively new in the 1800s, and there was a fierce competition between homeopaths (like Carolyn Putnam) and allopaths.

Throughout her career, Carolyn was involved with the International Hahnemannian Association. She was active in organizing committees and submitted at least one paper discussing the group’s opposition to President Taft’s intent to create a national board of health at the annual conference in Kansas City in 1910.2 In 1911, she attended the conference held in London, traveling with several of her colleagues aboard the White Star ship, Megantic.3

The conundrum lies in finding the best way to celebrate this ancestor. I find it admirable that she broke with the norms of the times, never settled for a husband, and spent two decades as a professional trying to help people. There is no evidence she was an activist or a suffragette, but the life she chose was an act of defiance in her society. Remember, the 19th Amendment, giving Carolyn the right to vote, did not pass until two years after her death.

But at the same time, her field and her professional efforts put her at odds with reality. Evidence-based medicine would prove to be a better, more effective way of approaching the treatment of disease. Carolyn’s part in opposing that progress was harmful, whether she knew it or not.

Telling the Stories

In the end, our job is to tell the story of a person’s life. What they believed was important to them, and if we have evidence that tells us what they believed, we have to honor their memory by engaging with that belief.

I don’t know what the correct approach would be in every case. In drafting Carolyn’s biography, you’ll notice that I left out any commentary about the validity of homeopathic medicine. I did link to the Wikipedia page, though, knowing that people I respect and trust have had a hand in keeping that page fact- and evidence-based over the years. I have to trust my audience to understand that we can honor her life and her accomplishments without lending credence to ideas she held in error.

This is a common problem in genealogy. Sometimes, a researcher can ignore things, like discovering ancestors who believed in a drastically different religion from their own. Sometimes, it can be hard to process that an ancestor may have owned slaves, committed some horrific crime, or was a fervent supporter of a cause we find appalling today.

But we aren’t here to judge. We are here to document. We are here to tell their story as best we can.

What the audience thinks of that story is up to them.

1

If you’re looking for my sources, I cited them on Carrie’s WikiTree profile.

2

Newspapers.com, The Kansas City Times, Kansas City, Missouri; Tuesday, June 28, 1910, “They Oppose Health Board”.

3

Mastin, James William, M.D.. The Critique, Volume XVIII, January to December 1911; Denver Journal Publishing Company, Denver, Colorado, “A LETTER FROM DR. C. E. FISHER, MAILED IN MID-OCEAN” page 279 and “Americans Present” page 346.