Mightier Acorns

Journeys through Genealogy and Family History

A parody of a family coat of arms designed with acorns as elements, with the motto "ex gladnis potentioribus" Latin for "from Mighty Acorns"
From Mighty Acorns

recent posts

about

Tad Callin has been working on family history and genealogy since the late 1990s. He does most of his research on Ancestry and posts what he learns to WikiTree.
  • Two Steps Back

    Two Steps Back

    Still Progress, But Not The Kind I Wanted

    Last time I wrote about the Livingston family, I said this:

    …I finally decided to take some time to put a WikiTree profile together for James. After spending about five hours combing through the records and drafting a new profile page, I discovered that he and his wife already had WikiTree pages!

    This was great because I was able to add my work to an existing page that (now) adds several generations to the Wavetops for my Livingston ancestors. I also learned that James Livingston’s origins were in Cleish, Kinross-shire, Scotland, which I did not know before!

    As it turns out, the reason I did not know that before is because it might not be true. To understand why, we have to zoom out and look at all of the available evidence.

    The Case for James Livingston

    If you read the whole post Shine a Light on the Livingstons, you know that James Livingston‘s life after his marriage Elizabeth Clemson in 1782 is well documented in the Quaker records. But where he came from before that is less clear.

    When I found the WikiTree profile for James, it cited three key pieces of evidence for information about James Livingston’s life before he married:

    • James Livingston and Elizabeth Clemson’s marriage record
    • A biographical sketch of his (possible) nephew in the History of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania1
    • A birth record in Cleish, Kinross-shire, Scotland

    The marriage of James and Elizabeth is recorded in a secondary source, “The Clemson family of Pennsylvania, 1701-1968”2 which gives us the date of the marriage and James Livingston’s name, but the county record3 that confirms the secondary source account also provides the name of James’s father: William Livingston. (From here out, I’ll refer to him as “William Sr.”) William Sr.’s name is given in this record as “Wilhelm Lewyton,” and James is “James Lewyton,” but considering that the marriage took place in a German church4, and there don’t appear to be any other records with that spelling, I will assume for now that this is the only time their name was rendered as anything besides “Livingston.”

    The family described in History of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania may be our Livingston family, but I have yet to find records that conclusively show that the James Livingston named in this sketch is the same as our James Livingston. (I am inclined to believe that this is the same Livingston family, but I can’t be certain, yet.)

    Here is the relevant paragraph from Isaac Livingston’s biographical sketch:

    …[Isaac’s] grandfather, William Livingston, emigrated with his family, consisting of wife and four sons, to wit: William, John, Isaiah, and James, from Ireland in 1766, and settled in Lancaster County. John lived with his brother William in Salisbury until his death, and was buried in the Salisbury burial ground. He was never married. Isaiah and James moved to the West.

    You will note that this passage doesn’t give us much detail. If this is James’s family, all we learn about him is that he had three brothers, their (very common) names, and the detail that they came “from Ireland in 1766” – which will be hard to refute or verify. We know from the Quaker records that James “moved to the West” and died in Warren County, Ohio, but I have not yet found any records that tell me where Isaiah Livingston lived (either in Pennsylvania or in “the West”).

    Later in Isaac’s sketch, we are told that his father, James’s brother William (who I will refer to as “William Jr.”), was twelve years old when he arrived in America, which would put his date of birth in about 1754. The sketch also tells us that William Jr. and his wife, Jane Allison, were Quakers – a detail that may or may not be important, since we know most of what we know about James Livingston from Quaker meeting records. (I have not found a record of William Jr.’s marriage to Jane Allison outside of this sketch.)

    So far, the only record containing evidence about James Livingston’s birth comes from his appearance in the 1800 Census, which counted him in the “45 and older” category – putting his birthdate before 1755. All we know for sure is that we are looking for a man born about 1755 to a father named William. He may have had three brothers (William, John, Isaiah), and they may have come “from Ireland,” but even if the book’s account is accurate, that doesn’t mean any of them were born in Ireland.

    I don’t have any way of knowing how the person who found the 1754 Scottish birth record decided that the James Livingston born in Cleish parish, Kinross-shire, Scotland, was a match for the James Livingston in the Lancaster book. The citation on WikiTree came from FamilySearch5, but I also found it on Scotland’s People.

    (Scotland’s People is operated by the UK government and is free to search, but copies of the original records must be purchased to be viewed. Ancestry and FamilySearch license parts of that digitized database, so most of what I have been able to review consists of index records, and not the originals. I can’t link to this evidence, but I’ve built profiles for these families in Ancestry, and I’ll link to those later if you want to inspect the evidence for yourself.)

    That birth record tells us that James Livingston’s father was William Livingston, and gives his mother’s name as “Isobel Alexander.” Scotland’s People allows several useful searches, so I looked for other children of those parents6, we do find several brothers and sister:

    • James (1754),
    • John (1755),
    • Peter (1758),
    • Peter (1760),
    • William (1764),
    • Alexander (1766), and
    • Isabel (1768).

    I also found death records in Cleish for several of these children – William died in 1766 at age 2, Isabel died at age 1 in 1770, and both Alexander and the second son called Peter (born in 1760) died in 1775. Since the boy named William died in Cleish in 1766, he can’t be William Jr., and there is no evidence that William Sr. and Isabel had another son called William.

    There is also no brother named “Isaiah” in this family, and the fact that the deaths in 1775 occurred in Cleish suggest this is not the family from the sketch of Isaac Livingston. (I searched extensively and found no records that anyone named Isaiah Livingston was born in Scotland between 1740 and 1780.)

    But all that tells us is that the family in History of Lancaster County is not the family from Cleish – we still don’t know which of those two families the James Livingston who married Elizabeth Clemson belonged to.

    So Where Was James Livingston Born?

    Based on what we know for sure, James Livingston’s father was named William, and James was born sometime before 1755. So, assuming he was born in Scotland, he could be the James Livingston in any one (but not all) of these families. These links go to my Ancestry tree “The Nancy Witter Project” if you’d like to review the evidence there:

    1. James Livingston – b. before 1755, no place of birth named in documents, son of William Livingston (mother’s name not given), lived in Lancaster County, PA. May have immigrated in 1766. Brothers William (abt. 1754), Isaiah, and John.
    2. James Livingstone – b. 17 March 1745 in Queensferry parish to William and Elizabeth (Moncrief) Livingstone. Siblings: Katharine (1733) and William (1741).
    3. James Livingston – b. 3 September 1750 in Fossoway and Tulliebole parish to William Livingstone (prob. mother – Margaret Kid) Brother: Andrew (1752), half-siblings (children of Isobel Graham): Mary (1755), John (b. 1756), Isabel (1758-1759), John (1759-1760), Isabel (b. 1763).
    4. James Livingston – b. 20 July 1753 in Duddingston parish to William and Sibylla/Isobell (Halyburton) Livingston. Siblings: Jean (1755), William (1758), Isabel (1761), Isobell (1763), Andrew (1765), Robert (1768), David (1770).
    5. James Livingston – b. 13 Jan 1754 in Cleish parish to William and Isobell (Alexander) Livingston. Siblings: listed above.
    6. James Livingston – b. 25 August 1756 in Pencaitland parish to William and Elizabeth (Case) Livingston; OR James Livingston – b. 4 September 1757 in Pencaitland parish to William and Elizabeth (Cass) Livingston. (If these two records are showing the same parents, then the first boy may have died in infancy.)

    If we accept that the first family on the list, the family described in History of Lancaster County…, is our Livingston family, then we have to rule out the Scottish candidates for not fitting that family’s description. We have also not looked for candidates in Ireland, yet. (Because I don’t know where to look – any suggestions for a good online resource?) While the book doesn’t necessarily state that the Livingstons lived in Ireland, we should at least look there for evidence.

    Unfortunately, that leaves us in limbo. I have suggested changes to the Profile Manger for James Livingston’s WikiTree page, but he removed what I put in the Research Notes section as “speculation” (which is what the Research Notes section is for), and since the evidence we have is inconclusive, I’m honestly not sure what changes would be appropriate to make.

    So for now, James Livingston remains a Wavetop/Brick Wall, until we can find better evidence of his birth.

    1. History of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men. by Ellis, Franklin, 1828-1885; Evans, Samuel, 1823-1908, joint author. Publication date 1883. Part 2. Page 1059. https://archive.org/details/historyoflancast02elli/page/n1209/mode/2up?q=Livingston. ↩︎
    2. BELL, Raymond M., et al. “The Clemson Family of Pennsylvania, 1701-1968,” (FamilySearch link), page 3. The Historical Society of Pennsylvania by Raymond Martin Bell, Washington, Pa., Frank R. Baird, West Chester, Pa. and Margaret S. Ward, Oil City, Pa.. (Washington and Jefferson College Washington, Pennsylvania 1971) ↩︎
    3. “Pennsylvania, County Marriages, 1775-1991”, citing Digital film/folder number: 007718478; FHL microfilm: 000844565; Image number: 574 (FamilySearch link: accessed 7 September 2025), James Lewyton, son of Wilhelm Lewyton, marriage to Elisabeth Clemson, daughter of Thomas Clemson, in 1782 in Pennsylvania, United States. ↩︎
    4. “Pennsylvania, U.S., Compiled Marriage Records, 1700-1821”, Original data: Pennsylvania Marriage Records. Harrisburg, PA: Pennsylvania Archives Printed Series, 1876. Series 2, Series 6, (Ancestry link: accessed 7 September 2025): Elisabeth Clemson, child of Thomas Clemson, marriage to James Lewyton on 6 Dec 1782 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. ↩︎
    5. “Scotland Births and Baptisms, 1564-1950”, database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XYK8-MHQ : 11 February 2020), James Livingston, 1754. ↩︎
    6. If you search for “Isobel Alexander” on the SP site, be sure click on “Search tools” next to the “forename” field and set it to “Fuzzy matching” instead of “Exact names only” – her name is spelled in a variety of ways. ↩︎
  • 1888: The Thomsens Arrive in America

    1888: The Thomsens Arrive in America

    On 17 April 1888, a Danish miller named Jens L. Thomsen, age 38, disembarked in New York City from the S/S Hekla, a ship of the Thingvalla line, with his wife, Mette (also 38) and son, Thomas, age 11.1 These are the folks we discussed in Danish Root: The Thompson Family in Iowa. They came from Gudumland, and on 29 March had sailed from Christiania2, Norway, bound for New York.

    On the following page, three more Thomsen children were recorded as passengers, but without any indication they were part of the Thomsen family: Maren (age 9), Christian (age 6), and Jens (11 months) – all with the surname Thomsen, originating in Gudumland.

    Jens may have made the decision to emigrate after seeing a Thingvalla Line promotional pamphlet, like this one published in 1887. The pamphlet (which you should read!) paints an enticing picture of spacious accommodations and good food, even in steerage (there’s a picture!) but they did leave out some details. The S/S Hekla (2) was the second Thingvalla ship of that name; the first S/S Hekla sank in February 1883. This second Hekla had “[l]ost her rudder during a storm 500 miles off the Irish coast” in 1886, after having suffered $5,000 worth of damage from a fire which “broke out in the hold and it was a case of spontaneous combustion” in October 1885.

    The S.S. Hekla (2) in Scandinavian America Line colors. Photographed by Anders Beere Wilse at Oslo. The image has been colorized by Borge Solem. License for the colorized work: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

    Fortunately, the Thomsens had an uneventful voyage. Jens, Mette, and their four children probably didn’t spend much time in New York City. The Thingvalla pamphlet recommended that immigrants should order train tickets to an inland destination when booking passage on a ship in order to avoid an expensive and lengthy stay in New York.

    But that raises the question: Where did they go? The Denmark Emigration index only has records for Jens and Maren, and the record for Jens gives his destination as New York City. But Maren’s says her destination is Lamberton, Minnesota.

    Kin in the American Midwest

    As we discussed in the last post about Tom and Lena Thompson, they married in Council Bluffs, Iowa, in 1899. In 1895, Jens L. Thomsen lived in Westbrook, Cottonwood County, Minnesota. Lamberton is in Redwood County, about twenty miles north and east of Westbrook, so I am comfortable assuming this is the same Jens L. Thomsen.

    In 1895, Jens lived in Westbrook with two young people:

    Minnesota, U.S., Territorial and State Censuses, 1849-1905, Line: 3, Roll: V290_54; Original data:Minnesota Historical Society. Minnesota State Population Census Schedules, 1865-1905. St. Paul, MN, USA: Minnesota Historical Society, 1977.

    I almost missed the fact that Jens was not alone in this household because the database didn’t link household members together, but here we have “Katrine,” age 17, and “Marinus,” age 10. It seems odd to record them by their middle names, but “Katrine” seems like a reasonable spelling for “Cathrine” given the way the name was most likely pronounced in Denmark. I assume Mette Marie died between 1888 and 1895, though this record does not explicitly state that Jens L. is widowed.

    Looking for them in 1900, I find a Census record for a widowed “Joseph Thomsen” (which is almost certainly mistranscribed – I think it says “Jens L.” under the enumeration note) and a son, Jens M. in Westbrook.

    1900 United States Federal Census Westbrook, Cottonwood, Minnesota; Roll: 761; Page: 5; Enumeration District: 0076; Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2004.

    What I have not told you, though, is that when I was first researching this family, I didn’t know about the two younger sons until I looked at this 1895 Census record. Remember how Maren, Christian, and Jens M. were listed on a different page in the ship’s passenger record? I didn’t find that information until after I found Jens Marinus in these two records and went back to answer the question, “When did the younger children come over, and where did they live?”

    And that led me to look at all of Jens Laurits and Mette Marie’s siblings!

    MORE Kin in the American Midwest

    This is the part of the research project that becomes grueling: building a biography for every one of Jens and Mette’s siblings. I’m a methodical person, so I started with the oldest of Jens’s four sisters.

    I only needed to determine whether they emigrated from Denmark, and if so, when. The three eldest sisters were Dorthe, Lovise, and Ida Marie: they all married in Denmark, and either died there or (in Ida Marie’s case) at least stayed in Hjorring Amt (county) until 1890. The youngest, Ane Marie, was born on 19 Feb 1852, and the latest record I could find showed her confirmation in 1866 – after that, I can’t find any records that conclusively belong to her.

    Mette Marie had two younger sisters: Ane Margrethe and Martine. Their parents were Thomas Christian Jespersen and Cathrine “Trine” Madsdatter. Before the 1856 naming act in Denmark changed how surnames were passed down, the three sisters appeared with the last name “Thomsdatter,” but after 1856, they became “Thomsen” and their mother appeared as “Madsen” in the Denmark Census and church records. That also means that if they came to the United States, Trine and her daughters could also appear under the surname “Jespersen.”

    And, Behold!

    Thomas Jespersen, his wife, Kathrine, and an 11-year-old girl “Christine” who is listed as “daughter,” departed from Copenhagen aboard the S/S Island, another Thingvalla ship, on 3 April 1884, arriving in New York on 21 Apr 1884. According to the Denmark, Emigration Index, 1868-1908, their destination was Council Bluffs, Iowa.

    The more I look, the more evidence I find that Mette Marie’s family preceded her and her husband to the United States. There are still many important gaps and inconsistencies in the records to figure out, but here is a rough timeline of events:

    • 1878: Ane Margrethe Thomsen (at about age 24) marries Jens Nelson in Racine, Wisconsin, and they settle in Westbrook, Cottonwood County, Minnesota.
    • 1882: Martine Thomsen (age 23) of Dronninglund, Hjørring, travels from Denmark to Omaha, Nebraska. I presume this is a visit to the family of her intended husband, Jens Pedersen, who had also emigrated from Hjørring a few years prior.
    • 1884: Thomas Jespersen, his wife Katherine Jespersen, and 11-year-old Christine Jespersen immigrate to the U.S. in April 1884 and settle in Council Bluffs, Iowa, where Martine marries Jens Peterson in May.
    • 1888: Jens Thomsen, Mette, and their four children arrive in the U.S., probably settling in Minnesota.

    This shows a pattern of immigration that unfolded over ten years, with neighbors from Aalborg and Hjørring crossing the ocean to join communities in Minnesota and Iowa, and Mette Marie’s entire family eventually joining them.

    Conclusion? Not Quite…

    I still have a lot of questions. When did Mette Marie die, and where was she buried? What happened to Christian Peter Thomsen after the family arrived in the U.S.? What happened to Maren and Jens Marinus after we see them in 1895 and 1900? Who was Christine Jespersen?

    But for now, I need to take some satisfaction in the progress we have made, and acknowledge that this story won’t be told all at once. I’ve been working on the text of the post as the picture evolved, adding children, revisiting siblings, moving between databases and adjusting assumptions as new evidence arises. For now, we can assert with more confidence:

    On 17 April 1888, a Danish miller named Jens L. Thomsen, age 38, disembarked in New York City from the S/S Hekla, a ship of the Thingvalla line, with his family…

    …and know that “with his family” means a lot more than we thought it did!

    1. New York, U.S., Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957; Microfilm Serial or NAID: M237; RG Title: Records of the U.S. Customs Service; RG: 36; Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010. ↩︎
    2. Christiania regained its original name, Oslo, in 1925. ↩︎

  • Hail, Hail! The Hale Hales!

    Hail, Hail! The Hale Hales!

    My 4th cousin, 3x removed, Robert Lewis Hale (1895-1977), was a fellow genealogist. He died when I was five years old, and he left behind a body of research similar to The Callin Family History. His book was privately printed after his death, probably by his daughter, Hester Ann Hale (1927-2008). “H.A. Hale” donated copies to at least a few genealogical societies, and I was able to find four physical copies held in four libraries on WorldCat.

    Secondary Source Conundrum: Is It Trustworthy?

    Finding a book like A History of the Family of Hugh and Mary Hales isn’t the end of my search for my Hale/Hales ancestors, but it is still an exciting landmark for me.

    The preface tells you a bit about the quality of the research that went into the book.

    “Many years ago I was furnished a copy of data contained in an old family Bible that belonged to my great great grand-father, Hugh Hales, Jr. About a dozen years ago /written in 1965, I decided to try to see if I could compile a list of all the descendants of this family.”

    That is Robert L. Hale’s own explanation of the purpose of this book. What follows is a copy of the family history аs he had compiled it (with minor additions and corrections) up to the time of his death, September 13, 1977.

    It represents many years of part-time research and, while it obviously is incomplete, it should be accurate for the most part – at least to the extent that public records and recollections of family members are accurate.

    Most of the information has derived from Census, court house, and cemetery data. Much was furnished by members of various Hale branches and from people acquainted with them.

    Because Mr. Hale enjoyed his hobby and appreciated the help he had received, it was his wish to share his findings with other family historians.

    Unfortunately, in the interest of presenting a concise Descendants Report for our progenitor, Hugh Hales (1737-1817), Mr. Hale left out specific citations for much of the research he did. There are places where he mentions whether a fact came from the Hales family Bible or from another family Bible, and he does include some information from the U.S. Census in places. But those are exceptions to the norm.

    Most of the book consists of names and biographical facts, organized using a modified de Villiers/Pama System in an outline structure. I was able to find my dad and Aunt Vicki in the then-most recent generation, and compared Mr. Hale’s information to what I have been able to document. There are a few minor errors (my great-grandfather’s name was recorded as “John I. Callin” instead of “his correct “John Q. Callin”) but the rest of the information tracks with what I have been able to prove with my own research.

    In a way, the “John I. Callin” error reinforces my faith in Mr. Hale’s work, because the 1920 U.S. Census record for John’s family was transcribed that way by Ancestry, and I have seen it “John I. Callin” show up in other trees. This suggests to me that Mr. Hale got the information about my great-grandparents from these census records.

    I will still need to track down original records to confirm what Mr. Hale produced, but unless I find original documents that refute his work, I think I can depend on this book as a framework going forward.

    Filling In the Blanks

    If you recall, I talked about piecing together clues about the Hales family from other secondary sources in The Ubiquity of Prominence. I was able to stitch together enough clues to guess that Baker Hales (1803-1880) was the son of William Hales (1767-1835), and the brother of Mary Elizabeth (Hales) Dailey (1815-1883). William’s family lived in Brooke County, Virginia (which is now West Virginia) long enough to be listed in at least three U.S. Census counts. And many of William’s relatives ended up in Hancock County, Ohio.

    Now, after finding A History of the Family of Hugh and Mary Hales, I can confirm William’s origins, and I now know his parents’ and sibling’s names, thanks to what Mr. Hale reported from the Hales family Bible.

    With that framework to guide me, I can begin to look for documentary evidence that will expand on what Mr. Hale has, possibly tracing Hugh and Mary Hales’s family back through their origins in Baltimore and Harford Counties in Maryland. The irony here is that I lived in Baltimore County for 15 years, so I could have been doing local research all this time, had I but known!

    Esoterica and Illustrations

    I remember my Grandpa Bob telling me that his grandmother’s maiden name was “Hale” – and that he supposed we must be related to Nathan Hale, a soldier and spy for the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. When Nathan was hanged by the British in 1776, he was only 21, and had not married or had children (that we know of). So far, I have not seen any evidence linking Hugh Hales to the Hale family that Nathan descended from.

    And yet… this idea persists that because we share a rather common surname, there must be a connection. When A History of the Family of Hugh and Mary Hales went to publication, it included a page featuring the Hales family Coat of Arms and a page of historical lore about the origin of the surname provided by Kenneth Glyn Hales, Secretary and Custodian of Records for the Hales Genealogical Society.

    version found on The Hales Family History Society website
    WikiMedia Commons: image of Coat of Arms of Robert Hale

    According to the description on the WikiMedia page, this is the Coat of Arms reportedly used by Ensign Robert Hale of Charlestown, Massachusetts, 1630, a direct ancestor of Nathan Hale, based on the heraldic blazon recorded in Matthews’ American Armoury and Blue Book.

    Perhaps one day, we might find a family connection to the prominent Colonial Hale family, but for now, we don’t know what that connection is.

  • Grandma Merle’s Travelogue: Back to Arizona (1913)

    Grandma Merle’s Travelogue: Back to Arizona (1913)

    This is part three of a series of posts based on the 60-minute recording of my great-grandmother, Hannah Merle (Huff) Witter. Last time, Merle talked about her family’s life in Glendale, Arizona, between 1907 and 1911, when they moved back to Kansas. Tuberculosis impacted Merle’s family, especially her older half-brother, Perry; but after Perry’s death, Merle decided she liked living in Glendale and returned there.

    Merle finally meets my great-grandfather

    Daddy – Dick – came out here I would guess, in about …1910 or 11, I’m not sure. And he came out here partly because…well, I guess he’d have been about 19 years old or 20, I’m not sure. Never stopped to figure it out. 

    But he had an uncle and an aunt living out here. That was Charlie Gilbert and Mrs…. Dick’s mother’s sister. And he stayed at their place for a while, and worked with Uncle Charlie… did work with the beets, that is he managed the ranch and done the buying for them and things like that. Dick got interested in it, and he got some teams and did help with the farming work of the beets, and he had his own bachelor’s tent, then, when he got out in the beet fields.

    Dick’s mother was Nancy (Shriver) Witter, and her sister would have been Eunice Alma (Schriver) Gilbert (1868–1951).

    Later, after the beet market didn’t do so well, [Dick] had moved and bought a little place a mile south and about a quarter east of Glendale. And there in his camp, he had about, at first he bought five acres, then a little later he bought the other five back of it. And later still he bought another 10 beside it. So he had the 20 acres, there. 

    Sugar Beet Factory is pictured here in 1915. Smoke belches from the gigantic smokestack as sugar beets are processed into raw sugar near the end of its sugar-producing days. Empty and unused for years, the building still stands near Glendale and 52nd avenues.
    Photo from AZCentral1, provided by the Glendale Historical Society

    I met him, believe it of all things, at Sunday School. I think …That was at the First Christian Church. Not the church, the Sunday school. They didn’t have the church yet, but they had the Sunday school started and were getting ready to organize the church, but they met in the woman’s club house here in Glendale. And of course, the women’s club didn’t rent it to just us, the church; they rented to others and mostly it was a dance on Saturdays.

    There is a lot of history behind the First Christian Church in Glendale; they underwent a drastic change in 2018.2 The full name of the denomination is “Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)” if you’d like to dig deeper into Grandma Merle’s faith.

    I was living with Iva at that time, and she had, had.. and I, and Phil would walk from their house across through the desert and get the hall cleaned up so we could have our Sunday school and church Sunday morning., and we all of course, with the dances and programs that they’d had Saturday night before, the chairs were all around the wall, and a lot of other things we had to clean up on Sunday morning. The women’s club is right where it is now, the same one, the same building, except they have done a little remodeling and little renovation of it. 

    And we lived the other side of the tracks across from [Lateral] 18. And I met Daddy, he was coming, he came to Sunday school there, we had a …oh maybe 9, 10, 11, I’m not sure just how many of us there were, and I’d hate to have to name all of them. But we had a good time in Sunday school.

    I was already, through Iva and Bertha, we all of us belonged to the Christian church, and they were charter members, and I had already belonged to the Christian church back in Savonburg, so I was a charter member too, although I was working in Phoenix when they were organizing. But they managed for me to get my name put on the list, so I was a charter member too.

    But I didn’t meet Daddy until after that, and he was not a charter member, but he was one of the very first ones that did join the church.

    The Onset of World War One

    The First World War disrupted life early in Dick and Merle’s marriage. I wrote about his service in Twice Honored, but this is all new information to me about his time in the Army.

    At that time, I was working in Phoenix for the Valley lumber company, and I was a stenographer and bookkeeper. …but I would imagine that it was …March 15th 1917, and I imagine I met him somewhere along in 13 or 14, but I can’t be sure of that. Then he …he joined and enlisted in the … [this word was garbled on the recording] Depot in California, he went along in the summer after we were married and enlisted, then he came back to Arizona to be waited until they called him.

    And they called him in the fall. In the meantime, after we had married, he built us a little house on his acreage and we had a bunch of cows and some horses. His garden horses, he also had a team of work mules, at least one team. Of course all of that had to be sold off before he could… because I couldn’t very well manage it. 

    We bought a lot, about half a block from Iva’s. That was over in northern addition. It was just a one little room square building on it. So he put, built all around it the back part of it then was enclose for the kitchen, and the south side of it was enclosed for the bedroom. And the rest of it then, well part of it was screened in. I guess maybe all of it eventually was screened in the porch around it. And I was supposed to have lived there while he was gone.

    He did move me up there, and when his call came, he left. But I was kind of blue, I expect. So I had quit working sooner and put in full time for Sample More meat market. Before that for about six or eight months, anyway, no, it was longer than that, it was before we were married anyway. I had stared doing the bookkeeping for Sample and More just on an evening basis, after I finished working for the lumber company, I’d come out and do their book work and the posting, anyway and everything. I’d usually work about three evenings a week in there. 

    And after I quit in phoenix, the lumber company, I worked full time at their place. Then… after I’d decided to go to follow Dick over to California, he seemed to be establish there. I quit all of the jobs, I quit that one, too. And I’m not sure… I think it ws the first of January in… that I wnt over to California where he was. I was in San Diego in a little apartment, and he was at … Depot base.

    He could come in twice a week, he could come in Wednesday and he could stay just so he got back out to camp in time for breakfast to begin the day the nxt day. And on Saturdy, he could come in an noon and didn’t have to be back until Monday morning early.

    Most of the boys didn’t have it that nice; just the married ones was the only ones could stay in town overnight. The rest of em had to be back the same night, SAturday night, and Wednesday night, when they went in.

    In the summer, when Dick got a couple of weeks off, in the meantime to go back and forth from camp and to San Diego we had bought an old Ford. And the fact of the matter is I had to buy it. Because when we went in and he found the one he wanted, and he was getting started was gonna start it was gonna be a charge account and they wouldn’t sell it to him. I had to be the buyer; because they couldn’t collect it from the soldier, but I was a civilian so they insisted on selling it to me. But they had the surprise of their lives when we agreed to that, and I just wrote em a check for the thing, because our cattle and stuff had been sold off and he had put it all in my name anyway. So I just wrote em a check, but then they explained afterwards why they couldn’t sell it to him.

    But anyway, in the summer we got a furlough, we came back to Airzona in that old ford, and on the way back… of course we had to ferry across the Colorado River. There was no crossing at Parker, only the ferry. And it was uneventful except that it was a long, tiresome ride in that old Ford.

    Dick and Merle’s “Uneventful” Journey

    But we drove that first day to get …not on the first day, but the day we was gonna get to the ferry… because they ferry didn’t open until 9 o’clock the next morning, and Dick wanted to be across the ferry the night before because he didn’t want to fool around until 9 o clock, to cross and get started on our way again. 

    So I was pretty tired, but we did, we crossed the ferry. We camped just a mile or two beyond. And uh.. I was too tired, I didn’t want anything to eat at all, but Dick was hungry and he figured if he got supper, I would eat too, so he started a little camp fire. I think he was frying himself if I remember some potatoes or maybe some bacon, I don’t know what, but he started a little fire. And he finished his supper and crawled into bed, and the fire had kinda burned down a little bit.

    He hadn’t gotten to sleep yet, and he couldn’t tell for sure where it was, but it sounded like it was right at my head. And I had gotten to sleep. And he was afraid, he didn’t want to startle me, but he didn’t know which way I’d jump or which direction the snake was. But when he said “Snake” I did jump anyway, I come right awake and jumped. I went hand over hand, I don’t know how far, just rolling. I was clear out of reach of the snake, and it happened that I went in the direction the snake had been right at the foot of our bed!

    We didn’t have very much better luck sleeping the next night. We came to a nice little lake – I can’t remember the name of that lake – it was some shade trees along there, and people had camped along there, and a little road went along beside it. It looked nice because we didn’t get too much rest the night before with the rattlesnakes.

    So we made camp and got settled and was just ready to put down our beds and crawl in, when we happened to look down the road, it was just a dirt road by the lake, and here comes three big tarantulas. They looked like they was as big as your hand with your fingers down, just walking in file, one two three, right down the road in front of where we’d planned to camp. So we didn’t feel like getting up and going on. We didn’t much feel like sleeping there on the ground, either. So we slept in the car that night.

    And we got up early enough and made it on back to our little old apartment the next day, and we was very glad to get to a place where it was safe to sleep.

    Next time…

    We’ll get a taste of married life as Merle and Dick start a family in Glendale.

    1. AZCentral, “This is what Glendale used to look like: See the historical photos“, 7 May 2025. ↩︎
    2. Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), disciples.org: Arizona region helps congregation find ‘resurrection story’ in new ministry center, December 11, 2018. ↩︎
  • HAMP: Harmonizing with FamilySearch

    HAMP: Harmonizing with FamilySearch

    part of a series, “Harmonizing Across Multiple Platforms“

    You want to ensure that your work as a family historian and your family’s history are well-represented online. To accomplish that you will need to pay attention to the information that appears on all of the websites that might include your family, and one of the largest and oldest databases has been hosting a “one world tree,” the FamilySearch FamilyTree (FSFT), in addition to their various indexing projects.

    As you consider the “footprint” you’re going to leave behind, you shouldn’t ignore the way your family is represented on FamilySearch.org. There are a few extra things to consider before you dive in and start “fixing” what you find on this resource.

    The Benefits of Longevity

    FamilySearch is a nonprofit organization operated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and is part of the Church’s Family History Department (FHD). As that Wikipedia article will tell you, “The Family History Department was originally established in 1894, as the Genealogical Society of Utah (GSU); it is the largest genealogy organization in the world.”

    So when you visit familysearch.org and create a free account, you’re benefiting from a 130-year-old nonprofit organization’s mission to help people learn more about their family history. While the records they offer for online use may lag behind other services that offer digitized, online, and indexed records, their collection is vast and worth exploring. And while the FSFT is prone to the same kinds of mistakes and shortcuts that plague other platforms hosting user-generated content, this user-generated tree may strike you as more user-friendly than WikiTree.

    But there is an added wrinkle to that history.

    Who is Behind FamilySearch?

    Usually, when you’re deciding on a company to trust with your family’s personal data and artifacts, your decision will revolve around how the company is making their money and whether they will use your work and your family’s photos and documents without your consent. As a nonprofit organization, FamilySearch isn’t likely to try to monetize your research…but there is another motive behind their 130-year project, and it is not easy to talk about objectively.

    The reason the Church of Latter-day Saints1 puts so much effort and financial support into this work has to do with their Temple ordinances – which are poorly understood by non-believers. As with most issues that revolve around what a large, diverse group of people believes, I can’t tell you what those beliefs are or how the rituals listed on that Wikipedia page work. You will have to explore that knowledge on your own.

    I know that members of my family (both living and dead) were and are horrified by the thought that their names could be used in a Temple ritual, and have expressed discomfort at having their information (and their ancestors’ information) included on FamilySearch for that reason. I have also been reassured by believers that the rituals are only done on behalf of the ancestors of believers. I can’t decide for you whether that is true or not, and if true, whether it is reassuring.

    I can tell you that I, as a nonbeliever, have asked my questions of believers, and based on what they have told me, I don’t think that their rituals have any real affect on my ancestors. The dead are dead, and unless someone comes back and tells me otherwise, they are beyond the reach of whatever we can do to them.

    So, in keeping with the part of the Serenity Prayer that deals with “things I cannot change,” I ignore as much of the controversy over rituals as I can, and I use FamilySearch as a sort of back-up to my Ancestry and WikiTree work.

    I recommend that before you create a FamilySearch account, you should learn as much as you feel is necessary about the rituals and history of the Church of Latter-Day Saints, and decide how you feel about this issue…taking into account how your relatives will feel about it if they learn you are contributing information about them to the FSFT.

    Practical Considerations

    Once you build your account and connect your profile to an existing ancestor already on the FSFT, you can quickly see “what is already there” in the database. From the “Family Tree” button in the top/left corner, you can find a pulldown menu with the “Tree” link – and once there, select your view. I chose the Fan Chart to get an idea where trouble spots might be:

    As you can see in the red circle, Seymour (not Teymons) Hart needs work. I’ve done quite a bit of work on the Hart family, which is documented on WikiTree, but I still need to improve what we have here on FSFT. I’ve done a bit of work on the family of Josephine Plumstead (green circle).

    Not to give away any spoilers for future posts, but I’ve also done a bit of work on the family of Samuel Tuttle:

    There are a lot of evolving features here, such as the Research helper (green circle) which opens a list of elements (green arrow) that can help you guide your research into Samuel.

    For the most part, I like the workflow that is built into the website. Clicking the “FamilySearch” link under “Search Records” takes you to a pre-filled query that you can use to find records. Adding records to your ancestor can get a little “fiddly” – notice I’m not offering a walkthrough here – but once you figure it out, you can build a robust list of Sources for each individual.

    You can also manually add outside sources, which you may need to do a lot if you decide to make FamilySearch your primary platform for housing your research. From the Sources tab for an individual, you should be able to see “+ADD SOURCE” at the top of the source list, which will bring up a form asking for basic citation information and a URL for the source you are linking.

    If you do invest any amount of time in your FSFT, you will need to get familiar with the processes for editing your tree and doing this like “Merging duplicate profiles” or using “Source Linker.” Fortnately, there is a pretty robust “Help” database at your fingerttips. Look for the “?” icon in the top right corner, a few spots to the left of your name (you can see it in the screenshot for Samuel Tuttle, above) and type what you need help with in the search bar pop-up. Typing “merge duplicates” can lead you to a short video “How Do I Merge Two Duplicate Records?“

    Harmonizing Tips

    FamilySearch does offer a few ways to integrate itself with other platforms – such as the links to other sites we saw under “Search Records” – but on balance, I find that it is a rather self-contained ecosystem. By that I mean, if you make it your primary platform, you might not need to leave their site to do everything you need to do – and again, it is free.

    Their records overlap with other free services, because in most cases, they digitized and databased those records originally and have licensed them to other sites. I find that there are circumstances where there are U.S. marriage records in FS that I can’t find in other places, so even though I pay for Ancestry access, I still sometimes lean on FS for those.

    If you are searching for data outside of the U.S., select “Search” –> “Records” and look for the “Search by Place” search box to go to the databases for the country you’re interested in.

    If, like me, you do your research on one main site but document your work on another (like WikiTree, which we will talk about in more detail at a later date), there are several easy options for generating citations from FamilySearch that you can paste into your other site.

    Next Up…

    I plan to give you a “philosophy of WikiTree” – less of a how-to, and more of a “why-to”… but if you’d rather learn about another platform, let me know! I’m happy to flex a little bit.

    Even better, if you have a favorite platform, write and tell me about it – guest posts are always welcome!

    1. I am trying to respect the recent “rebranding” of the Church – see this 2018 CNN article “Mormons don’t want you calling them Mormons anymore” – however, it is confusing to people who are not familiar with the church or its history if I refer to them by their chosen names without mentioning the “Mormon” or “LDS” names. I am not a believer, so I hope this gesture of respect will be taken into account by believers when they inevitably accuse me of treating their faith disrespectfully. ↩︎
  • Danish Roots: The Thompson Family in Iowa

    Danish Roots: The Thompson Family in Iowa

    My wife’s paternal grandmother was June Margery (Shuffler) McCullough (1928-2010), and June’s mother was Esther Anna (Thompson) Shuffler (1908-1988). Esther was born in Council Bluffs, Iowa, but her father was a Danish immigrant, and her mother was the daughter of Danish immigrants.

    Tom and Lena are two of Her Sixteen – two of my wife’s 16 great-great-grandparents. We touched on parts of their story in Family Reunion: Thompson/Thomsen and Family Reunion: Jensen.

    The Time Before Surnames

    As we discussed in the Family Reunion post for the Thomsen family:

    Thomas Christian (Thomsen) Thompson (1876 – 1951) was the son of Jens Laurits Thomsen (b. 1849) and Mette Marie Thomsdatter (b. 1849), born on 2 Oct 1876 in Gudum, a parish of Ålborg, Denmark.

    You may have noticed that Thomas was given the surname “Thomsen” when he was born, instead of the traditional patronym of “Jensen” even though his father, Jens, seems to have been named “Jens Thomsen” after his father, Thomas Jensen. This Wikipedia article suggests that the 1856 naming act in Denmark could be the reason for this switch. Jens was born in 1849, so he took the traditional patronym. His son, born long after the naming act required children to inherit their father’s surname, then took “Thomsen” instead of “Jensen”.

    If you’ve been accustomed to researching families that used surnames, you will need to be extra careful, because your eye will be conditioned to reject records with surnames that don’t match. I know I have to look carefully through Hints and Search results to make sure that I have “three matching points of data” before I consider accepting a record and adding it to my tree. With Tom Thomsen, I have been lucky enough to find records that consistently include both parents’ full names, full place names, and accurate (if not always precise1) dates.

    That challenge becomes less difficult with practice, especially if you are lucky enough to find your target family in church records. Likewise, learning how to recognize and navigate the place names in Denmark (or whatever country your ancestors hailed from) will become easier with familiarity. Don’t rush yourself. Take the time to make sure you have found the correct family, in the right place, at the right time before expanding to siblings and earlier generations.

    Finding Your Place

    I am no expert on European place names, and given the unpredictable number of variables that can affect what appears on a given record, you may struggle to interpret what you find. Not only can the names of various types of districts/counties/dioceses/parishes change over the lifetime of your ancestor, there may be two different and valid names for the same place (one municipal, one religious) for the same time period. And the person can move, of course.

    On top of those factors, the records that get to you might be in the original language (in this case, Danish) or may be transcribed into English. “Gudum, Ålborg, Danmark” would be the same place as “Gudum, Aalborg, Denmark,” for example. Records might omit the type of jurisdiction (as the previous example did, leaving out the “Amt” in “Ålborg Amt”) or might list multiple jurisdictions, like this: “Hellevad Sogn (Hjørring Amt), Ålborg Amt; Hjørring Amt, Danmark” showing that the church parish (Sogn) of Hellevad was partly in Aalborg county (Amt) and partly in Hjorring county.

    There are numerous resources online that can help you figure out where your ancestor’s records place them, but I recommend starting with the gazetteers2 linked from the FamilySearch.org wiki – Denmark Gazetteers has links to several sites. You can also start on their Denmark Genealogy page and drill down to the Counties or Parishes you are interested in. That’s how I found my way to the page for Jens Laurits Thomsen’s birthplace, Hallund Sogn, Hjørring Amt, Danmark.

    Again, take your time, learn how the gazetteers work, and make sure you are finding records for the right person before you add them to your tree. (And don’t be afraid to translate individual words – knowing that the “Relation to Head of House: Tjenestekarl” means “servant” can be key information!)

    Tom Thomsen’s Parents

    There were several online trees that confidently told me the names of Tom’s parents, but the sources that would usually confirm that information were not helpful. His Iowa death certificate from 1951 listed both parents as “Unknown” – meaning that the informant, his daughter Dagmar Ranum, did not know her grandparents. But, she did give a precise date of birth (2 October 1876) and multiple sources, including his obituary, gave Denmark as his birthplace.

    Denmark, Church Records, 1812-1924 show Thomas Christian Thomsen born 2 Okt. 1876 in Gudum, Aalborg, Denmark, to parents “Indsidder” Jens Laurits Thomsen and wise (Hustra) Mette Marie Thomsen. From there, we can find the family in the 1880 Denmark Census, where we learn the name of Tom’s sister, Maren Cathrine Thomsen.

    From there, the puzzle pieces begin to fall into place, but not without some difficulty. For example, you see that Mette Marie’s last name is give as “Thomsen,” which could simply mean that Tom’s birth record listed her married name. That would be unusual, though, and further digging to find Jens and Mette Marie’s marriage record shows her maiden name is “Thomsen” also.

    It turns out that her father’s name was Thomas Christian Jespersen. She was born before the Naming Act of 1856 went into effect, and thus she was listed with the patronymic “Mette Marie Thomsdatter” on the 1850 and 1855 Denmark Census – but from 1860 onward, she appeared under the surname “Mette Marie Thomsen.”

    Both Jens and Mette Marie grew up near what is now the Brønderslev Municipality, and their records show several of the placenames you can see on this map:

    As you can see, there is a lot of information to assemble before we can put together a biography for either of Tom Thomsen’s parents. Challenges can vary, from the number of people with similar names from neighboring districts and counties, the confusing transitions from using patronyms to surnames, the use of abbreviations (“Thomsdr” for “Thomsdatter”) or simply working around clerical errors (Mette Marie’s mother’s name should have been “Cathrine Madsdatter” but was recorded as “Inger Madsdr” on a key baptismal record).

    For now, our WikiTree entries stop with Tom Thompson of Iowa, but with some patience and care, the records that tell us the rest of the story about his parents and sister should come to light. And when they do, I’ll get to tell that story. We know Jens emigrated in 1888, but did Tom come with him? What about Mette Maria and Maren Cathrine?

    Until then, back we go to mining the databases!

    1. If you don’t remember, we talked about the difference between “accuracy” and “precision” in Good Enough. ↩︎
    2. A gazetteer is a dictionary of place-names. ↩︎

  • The Biography of a Building

    The Biography of a Building

    Crestline School Dist. No. 78, 1921-2023

    I only know the beginning and ending of this story. In between are a century’s worth of individual tales of growth, learning, and the childhood memories of an unknowable number of children.

    The first time I learned about the existence of the Crestline School was when another researcher called Seth sent a message through the WikiTree profile of Albert Callin, saying:

    Albert designed the District 78 school, which was built in 1921 in the tiny town of Crestline, KS. It can be seen on streetview at the intersection of US 400 and Wyandotte. It was demolished in 2023.

    This led me to a site called Abandoned Kansas with an article about Crestline School Dist. No. 78, which includes a photo of one side of the building’s cornerstone (just not the side with Albert’s name on it).

    from Crestline School Dist. No. 78, on Abandoned Kansas

    Fortunately, Seth kindly grabbed a photo of his own and let us share it:

    Some minimal digging brought me to newspaper items from 2 July 1921 that helps confirm Albert’s involvement in the building of the school:

    Two jobs by architect Albert C. Callin Article from Jul 2, 1921 Kansas Construction News (Topeka, Kansas)

    All About Albert Callin

    Albert Clifford Callin was the son of James Monroe Callin (1844-1901) and Rosalina Bedora Davenport (1848-1876), the oldest brother of Jessie Chudley (if you recall our earlier post about her mysterious life).

    Albert at his drafting table, c. 1927

    By 1921, the Albert Callin family had been through some dark times. Twenty years before he designed the Crestline school, Albert’s business partner in Toledo had embezzled their investors’ money and left town. Albert insisted on paying back every penny stolen by the partner, and took his family south to Galveston, Texas, where a 1903 hurricane had devastated the town and created a need for builders like Albert.

    While working his way to Galveston, Albert took on a number of small jobs to pay his way. On one occasion, he undertook to repair a cotton gin that had jammed or broken. While he was working, someone accidentally turned it on, catching his left arm. He remained conscious and directed his own extraction from the gin. However, the doctors were unable to save the mangled, filthy arm, and it was amputated above the elbow.

    The family still made a living in Victoria, Texas, until 1914, when flooding there claimed the life of their 10-year-old son, John Albert, and they moved to Pittsburg, Kansas, where Mamie’s half-brother offered them a place to live. This is where Albert re-established himself as an architect.

    The End of the Story

    We don’t know how long the Crestline School building stood abandoned before it was demolished in 2023. We know it was a one-room schoolhouse, noted as such in this 1921 article about a school contest:

    Union school of Crestline - contest winnerUnion school of Crestline – contest winner 24 Feb 1921, Thu Modern Light (Columbus, Kansas) Newspapers.com

    The town of Crestline lies in Shawnee Township, Cherokee County. The school district there was No. 78, and they boasted two high schools as of 1904.1 The one-room Crestline school would have served as a primary school feeding into the high schools. The most recent reference to the school I could find was from a 1931 wedding announcement:

    Marriage of Bray / Riker

    Article from Oct 9, 1931 The Galena Journal (Galena, Kansas) Marriage <!— –>
    https://www.newspapers.com/nextstatic/embed.js

    In general, one-room schoolhouses were phased out during the 1940s and 1950s in favor of larger, more centralized schools. Given the devastation of the Great Depression on rural areas throughout the Midwest, it’s possible that the Crestline building stood unused for as long as 90 years, if it closed down in the mid-1930s.

    We do know that Albert and Mamie Callin retired to Greenwood, Colorado, around 1929. They died in the early 1930s and were buried in New Hope Cemetery in Fremont County, Colorado. It’s possible that one of the buildings Albert designed is still standing somewhere, but we know the Crestline school is not one of them.

    Perhaps with more digging, we’ll find a survivor one day.

    1. Allison, Nathaniel Thompson, ed, History of Cherokee County, Kansas and representative citizens, Biographical Publishing Co., Chicago, Ill., 1904; page 84. ↩︎
  • Grandma Merle’s Travelogue: Glendale, Arizona, in 1907

    Grandma Merle’s Travelogue: Glendale, Arizona, in 1907

    Last time, in Great-Grandma Merle’s Travelogue, we looked at the first 15 minutes of Great-Grandma Merle’s hour-long recording of her memories of moving from Kansas to Arizona. In the next 15 minutes, Grandma Merle talks about her family settling into life in Glendale: starting businesses, finding homes, and (for some) returning to Kansas.

    Some of the people mentioned in this recording appear in this photo, which was probably taken around 1932 or 1933. Albert C Huff (with his two pipes) died in 1936:

    Back, from left: Ernest “Uncle Ern” Kinman, Bertha (Huff) Kinman, Albert Burton Huff, Mary (Ezelle) Huff, Harry More, Iva (Huff) More, Dick Witter, Hannah Merle (Huff) Witter; seated, from left: Merle’s parents, Albert C. Huff, and Rosa (Murray) Huff.

    Upon Arriving in Arizona…

    Our first night here, we stayed in a hotel in Phoenix, and the next morning, we got up to catch a train over to Glendale. Perry had been in Glendale and liked that location the best, so we came over here to look for a location. 19-and-7, and it was some time in November when we got here.

    And we found a place to stay, to rent, and it was what was then known as the old Eire place. They were the people, I don’t know if they homesteaded, but they had built it. And it then was later, as most people remembered as the Pullens place. But there was another man…

    When we rented the place, it was owned by a man by the name of Doctor Tuttle, and that it was about a quarter of a mile, I guess, north on Lateral 18. And we lived there for, oh, at least a year, I imagine, because we were still living there when Bertha and Roy came out.

    “Lateral 18” was later named 59th Avenue, and you can see some historical photos of the area on AZCentral’s site in their article from May 2025: “This is what Glendale used to look like: See the historical photos.”

    Bertha Huff’s first husband was Roy Sample. Bertha was Merle’s older sister. I wrote about Bertha and her family’s butcher shop in “Sample-More Meats – a Businesswoman’s Story” a while back. There are some photos there showing the butcher shop and early Glendale.

    Then, they got, when the boys started up – Perry and Roy started a butcher shop, and Bertha and Roy got a place, and they lived in town. But Dr. Tuttle gave Grandpa a job as foreman on his ranch. That was a mile north of town, and about a quarter east, then up into the field, where that was. And, Dr. Tuttle’s wife was …those guys’ names… The Tuttle house, where we lived, was on the north side of the road, and just a little ways from the Sands ranch. Mrs. Tuttle was related to the Sands. I don’t know if it was Mrs. Sands or the boys, but she was related to them.

    We were there, oh, probably a year and a half. But in the meantime, while we were still living at that place, my sister Iva and her husband Harry and they, at that time, had baby Phil. He was only a few weeks old, about three weeks old when they came out. Of course, in the meantime, …[Thelma] Sample was a little older than he was about six weeks. And she later married and was Thelma Akin.

    Bertha and Roy’s children were Thelma (born 1909) and J.L. (for John Leroy, born 1913). Iva (Huff) and Harry More had one son, Phil, born in 1909. They can all be seen here in photos from the collection Merle handed down to my Grandma Nancy. (I owe all of them some attention on WikiTree.)

    Thelma Sample, undated
    J.L. Sample, undated
    Phil More
    Phil More, 1909
    Phil More, 1909

    Grandma Merle never gives us Roy Sample’s full story, but he died on 21 December 1918 from typhoid-pneumonia. Considering all of the illness that struck the family during this decade, I’m not surprised she left some details out.

    The Family and Tuberculosis

    Merle alluded to Perry’s illness before as a reason for the family’s move, but here she goes into more detail about how many of them were affected by tuberculosis.

    But Iva and them, and Perry hadn’t been feeling too good. The work was too heavy for him or something. So when Harry [More] came out, he sold his interest in the butchers’ shop to Harry. And that is where the Sample and More Meat Market came in. And Perry didn’t seem to get over that; that was too much, and he kept going down.

    So, the doctors advised him to go to a sanitarium in Colorado, and I can’t name that place. But he was there a while and tried it, and we stayed on in Glendale. When the doctors told him there that he wouldn’t really get better, that wherever he would prefer to live was the place for him to be. 

    Well, he knew everybody back in Kansas, Savonburg, so he decided he wanted to go back there. So Grandpa gave up his job, and we caught the train, and went and met him over there, then, together we all went back to Kansas. 

    He lived there with us, we had to stay in town, in a place in town, because our old home was rented out. When we got possession of that, then we moved out there.

    It isn’t clear from what Merle said about “Iva and them…hadn’t been feeling too good,” but if Iva (Merle’s sister, and the wife of Harry More, both seen in the photo above) was ill, that might have factored into the More family’s decision to move to Glendale. Next, Merle tells us how they think the family first contracted the disease, starting with Perry’s wife, Pearl Lucy (Enos) Huff:

    When Bertha and Roy first came out here [to Glendale, AZ], Bertha wasn’t very well, and she had come for her health, too. But before that, Perry’s wife had passed away with tuberculosis. Her name was Pearl, and Perry had contracted it from her, and of course, they was watching the baby to see that she didn’t come down with it, and she never did, to my knowledge.

    And …It helped Bertha right away, she began to get better. But Bertha then developed it too, because she had been living with them, and she and Pearl had had a milliner’s shop in Savonburg, Kansas, and they contracted it from their cow. 

    They had a really nice, and you never saw a prettier cow, but one day when we went out to the barn to milk the cow, she was laying there dead, and when they had an autopsy, they found that the cow had TB. And that’s where Pearl had gotten it, and Bertha living there, and Perry, they had all gotten it. But it just developed with Pearl, first.

    But Bertha got better right away when she came out. And, when we went back with Perry, we stayed there… I did… I stayed there, but in the meantime, Bertha and Iva had come out, and they were running the butcher shop, and they used to butcher their beeves out in the open, back of our… where we lived there on fifty… on Lateral 18. They done their butchering out there on a Sunday, and then they sold a lot of it to the beet camps. They had beet fields out, and the camps would buy sometimes a quarter of a beef at a time. And that was Perry’s job, and it was too heavy for him to unload that. That was one reason he didn’t get any better.

    But after we went back, then we got our own place and we lived there, and… back in Kansas, and … we, I stayed there then until Perry passed away, and then I think it was, I know it was on my birthday, December 11, about in 19 and 12, because I didn’t come back out here to Arizona again then, until I came out here in June the 13th – 1913. It was on a Friday, besides.

    Perry Huff did die on 11 December, but in 1911. Next time, Merle will tell us about moving back to Arizona and how she met Howard Ray “Dick” Witter, my great-grandfather!

  • From Orphan to Preacher

    From Orphan to Preacher

    The life and times of James T. Reynolds (1852-1911)

    I haven’t talked about the Reynolds family since Family Reunion: Reynolds, and even there, I didn’t say much about my great-great grandfather. One of My Sixteen, James Thomas Reynolds was the son of Reuben Reynolds and Martha Arthur.

    Starting out with just state and federal records, I didn’t have much information about Reuben Reynolds. We find the names of “Reuben Reynolds” and “Martha” or “Marthia Arthur” from the death records of their two known sons. When their elder son, James Thomas Reynolds died in 1911, the informant recorded on his death certificate was his oldest son, John Reuben (recorded as Reuben Reynolds). The informant on the 1931 death certificate for their younger son, John Harold Reynolds, was his youngest son, Roy Stanley Reynolds. These two grandsons agreed on Reuben and Martha’s names, but gave different information for their respective places of birth: one said Virginia, the other said Kentucky.

    Reuben and Martha were most likely married in 1839, when they were 19 and 20 years old, respectively. Reuben is listed on the 1840 Census as a head of household in Greenup County, Kentucky, and just the two of them appear in the household at that time. They appear again in Greenup County in 1850, still just the two of them. This census gives Reuben’s place of birth as North Carolina and Martha’s as Virginia. All of these records indicate that Reuben was a farmer.

    The boys were born after 1850: James in 1852 and John in 1855, and Martha married her second husband, Jeremiah M Shy (1814–1895) on 14 Oct 1858 in Greenup County, Kentucky. There are records for other men called Reuben Reynolds after 1855, and it is possible that Reuben and Martha could have divorced or separated between 1855 and 1858, but the most likely scenario is that Reuben died about 1856.

    A Lot of Family in Kentucky

    Not long ago, we talked about the Dangerous Time in Kentucky leading up to the Civil War. That story focused on James Madison West, an abolitionist preacher, and his father, Thomas West, who was murdered in Lewis County, Kentucky, in 1862. You might recall that an early suspect in the murder was Thomas’s son-in-law, John Shaw May. He will re-enter this story in a moment.

    But first…

    James and John Reynolds grew up in the home of their step-father, Jeremiah Shy, along with his children from his first marriage. That home was in Boyd County, Kentucky, near Catlettsburg, in 1860, and in Esculapia, Lewis County, near Tollesboro, in 1870.

    I ran into the same trouble finding evidence of James’s marriage that I had with his parents. I know that he did marry, and I know his wife’s name, thanks to the death records of their children, but I have not been able to track down a marriage record. That said, we know he married Mary Frances May, probably in 1875, and that his brother, John Harold, married Catherine Rebecca May on 20 Apr 1876 in Lewis County, Kentucky.

    And yes, Mary and Catherine were sisters, the daughters of John Shaw May and Frances Mary West.

    There’s a Hole in my Census

    For a long time, I didn’t have direct evidence that my great-grandmother, Mary Ann “Vicie” Reynolds, was the daughter of James T and Mary (May) Reynolds. I had unsourced trees passed to me from my grandfather and from different cousins I found on the internet, but I couldn’t find the Reynolds’ 1880 household when and where it was supposed to be. Since Vicie was born in 1879 and married in 1898, the only record likely to place her with her family would be the 1880 Census.

    I haven’t found it, yet.

    But I did find indirect evidence in the obituary for John Reuben Reynolds:

    Retired Minister Dies at St. Albans

    Rev. John Reuben Reynolds, 71, a retired Baptist minister, died Sunday at his home in St. Albans. He had been a minister for more than 50 years and was a pioneer in Baptist missionary work. Surviving are his widow, Mrs. Norma Hazel Reynolds; a son, Paul J. Reynolds of Nitro; a daughter, Frances May Reynolds of St. Albans, and a sister, Mrs. Vincie Clark, Middletown, O.

    Charleston Daily Mail, Charleston, West Virginia, 7 Apr 1947, Page 2

    The only record from 1880 that looks like it might belong to our Reynolds family is for a “James Reyonalds” listed in the household of William and Mary Crawford as a “hired farmhand” in Elk Fork, Lewis County. He’s the right age to be our James Reynolds, but he’s listed as “single” – and he ought to be married with three of his four children. What’s interesting is that the two households below the Crawfords both have the surname “May” – a James May (age 34) and John May (age 56). That is John Shaw May, with his second wife, Mary (St. Clair) Brooks.

    That means that if this James Reynolds is our guy, and his wife and kids are living somewhere else (probably in Lewis County), they aren’t living with her parents. For now, I will have to keep looking for other avenues of evidence.

    Regardless of the situation in 1880, the youngest of James and Mary Reynolds’s four children, William Smith Reynolds, was born in October 1881, and Mary died on 19 May 1882. After that, James appears to have raised the children on his own, but we don’t see them in the census again until 1900.

    So far, I’ve only talked about evidence that paints James as an orphan who found work as a farmhand and suffered the loss of his wife. But after that gap in the records, clues in his later life tell us a different, less lonely story.

    Religion: Tool and Problem

    While examining the later records to find clues, I noticed that James was identified in the 1900 Census with the occupation “Clergyman” – and further, his son, John Reuben, was, too. The 1910 Census listed his occupation as “Preacher” and his industry as “Intinerant” – which suggests that rather than being the pastor of a specific church, he may have been a circuit rider, a traveling preacher who held services in areas too rural and remote to support a full time church.

    James died in 1911, and his death certificate specifies that he was a “Baptist minister” – which raises several questions and gives me some of those other avenues in which to look for evidence. Which kind of Baptist he was might tell me something about his beliefs and his story, and how he fit into post-Reconstrution Kentucky, but I wasn’t sure how to begin looking.

    I Googled “Is there a record of Baptist ministers who were ordained in Kentucky in the 1870s?” and the AI answer and several top results told me that, no, there was no single record of members or ministers, unless I knew the local church. Fortunately, further digging led me to “History of Greenup Association 1841 – 1941“, by L. H. Tipton, published on the Baptist History Homepage.

    The History was a 36-page pamphlet printed to commemorate the Centennial of the Association, and it turns out that Rev. James Thomas Reynolds and his son were descended from Thomas Reynolds, who was a founding member of the Greenup Association in 1841. The text answers many questions I hadn’t asked yet, and also raises a few. For example, it says that James “began his pastoral work in the Association in 1890 as pastor of Union Baptist Church, Lewis County.” It also points out that his son, J. R. (John Reuben, as we discussed) Reynolds, was a pastor in the Association, and the earliest date given for the J.R.’s ministry was 1898, when he would have been 46 years old.

    This history gives me enough details about the lives of James T and John Reuben to be sure we’re talking about the same men. But there are more details, particularly about James’s grandfather and his uncle, Thomas Kelley Reynolds, that I need to unpack, document, and verify.

    As exciting as it is to find a source that can tell me something deeper about the people found in the dry Census records and vital statistics, I need to be careful about how I approach these more personal stories. When we go from talking about records, which are more reliable despite the gaps and occasional spelling errors, to talking about stories repeated from pulpits over the course of decades, I have to take into account the biases and motivations of the people who repeated those stories, what they were trying to achieve by telling them, and how they were passed down to the publishers of the Greenup Association’s history.

    For now, I’ll just enjoy the fact that I have some solid information to confirm that I’m on the right track and researching the right people.

  • HAMP: Harmonizing with Find A Grave

    HAMP: Harmonizing with Find A Grave

    part of a series, “Harmonizing Across Multiple Platforms“

    You want to ensure that your work as a family historian and your family’s history are well-represented online. To accomplish that you will need to pay attention to the information that appears on all of the websites that might include your family.

    But, before you try to dive in and “fix” everything that is out in the world (not recommended!), you need to consider how these different platforms function, what they are designed for, and how much effort you are willing to expend on updating them.

    I’m talking less about “this is how you click the buttons to make changes” and more about “how do you make it easier for people to find what they are looking for?” These are Strategies for maintaining work on the same families over time, rather than Tactics for specific tasks.

    One major player that you shouldn’t ignore is Find a Grave.1 For about the first half of its existence, it was one of several online databases for cemetery information managed by individual people. In 2013, it was acquired by Ancestry.com, and while it still maintains an independent existence, that corporate relationship is important to keep in mind.

    Find A Grave: the Strengths

    There are few key points about Find A Grave that everybody should know:

    • It’s free*. (So create an account and experiment with finding your ancestors’ memorials.)
    • It’s collaborative – meaning anyone with a free account can:
      • Request headstone and gravesite photos (which are fulfilled by volunteers)
      • Submit photos (primarily of cemeteries and gravestones – read the Terms of Service carefully)
      • Edit individual memorials (why we’re talking about it today)
      • Link memorials (parents to children, spouses, etc.)
      • “Collect” memorials in Virtual Cemeteries

    (I wrote about this site a while back in Using Find-A-Grave, and I touched on some of these points there. If you’re a Mightier Acorns completionist, you can go check that piece out.)

    *Free!

    …meaning, you don’t pay money for an account or to use the services of fellow volunteers. But read the Terms of Service carefully when you sign up, and again before you contribute anything like family photos to the site. Pay special attention to Ancestry’s use of AI with regard to your contributions.

    There’s a useful and concise history of the site on their Wikipedia article that gives more detail, but the gist is that what started out as a personal development project was sold to Ancestry.com in 2013. Over the following five years, Ancestry updated the mobile app and made improvements to the back end and user interface.

    Right now, you can sign up by creating either a stand-alone Find a Grave account, or by signing in with an existing Ancestry account.

    Because it is owned by a large for-profit corporation, there is always the danger that it could be converted into a profit stream or shut down. Be mindful of that possibility – and make sure that you download the photos and information you depend on and store them in your personal archives so you don’t lose access to them. In the meantime, Find a Grave remains a valuable resource for many researchers.

    Set In Stone

    The core value of Find-A-Grave lies in the photos and transcriptions of individual grave markers. If the only source you have for your ancestor is a photo of their headstone on Find-A-Grave, that is still one of the most reliable “records” you can have. After all, gravestones are expensive, and families usually want their loved one to be well-represented by their marker.

    The rest of the site’s features revolve around that core concept. The database of cemeteries, the individual memorials, and all of the functions for editing and linking the memorials depend on finding the physical resting place of the ancestors in question.

    Your key takeaway should be this: of all the great things you may find on Find-A-Grave, the only thing you can rely on as a source is that physical grave marker. You will run across people citing Find-A-Grave on other platforms as a source for their ancestors’ vital information, but when you see someone citing Find-A-Grave as a source, you should verify that the memorial has that photo before you trust the information in it.

    There are cases where there is no headstone, but the memorial can still serve as evidence of the burial place. In Using Find-A-Grave, I talked about a photo request that was fulfilled with a “No Tombstone” response:

    My fulfilled request – for William Callin

    At first, it was disappointing to see the “No Tombstone” photo. The one thing that Find A Grave is most useful for is providing some physical evidence to support what you know about your target family. But I quickly moved past that disappointment to realize that “Anonymous” had provided the plot – Section 2, Lot 362 – which does confirm that William was buried in that cemetery.

    Outside of headstone photos, other information on Find-A-Grave needs to be treated with skepticism. Even if there is a thorough biography with proper source citations on a Find-A-Grave memorial, it’s not appropriate to cite Find-A-Grave as the source for the other biographical information. Cite the original source instead. All of that other information – the links between memorials for parents, spouses, children and siblings; the obituaries; the photographs – can be added by anyone without including sources and only needs to be approved by the individual memorial manager. If you’re lucky, that manager is has enough experience with genealogy to ask for sources before approving changes.

    Are you lucky, friend?

    It is also possible to create memorials without a specific cemetery, for people who were (for example) buried at sea, or who were not interred in a specific place. Those memorials might have accurate information, but again, without that physical evidence of a grave marker, the value of having the information on Find-A-Grave is not as solid as a platform where the information can be properly sourced.

    Using Find-A-Grave as your main platform

    In our first HAMP post, I talked about the unicorn of the one-stop shop, and there are people on Find-A-Grave who seem to have made that platform the “one place” where they try to manage their family trees.

    If that’s your choice, I wish you well, and I applaud those who attempt to keep the information on the platform as accurate and well-sourced as possible. When the memorials are well-organized and have their headstone photos in order, the site can look very satisfying. Here is one of My Sixteen, for example (and almost all of the hard work was done by others on that page, not by me!):

    Find-A-Grave memorial 35331914, Nancy Ellen Shriver Witter

    But, Find-A-Grave wasn’t designed to manage or house family trees, and you may find it extremely difficult to use that way.

    The main drawback (aside from the lack of a system for enforcing proper sourcing) is that only the manager of each memorial has the ability to approve edits. This means that if you run into a situation where a non-relative “owns” a memorial, or if the person is a relative but is not responsive, you may have trouble getting necessary edits approved. If you’re lucky, the person is a skilled genealogy researcher familiar with verifying sources, but if not, then the information that is/is not allowed on the memorial will be up their judgment (for better or worse).

    If you go in with a positive attitude and practice the de-escalation techniques we discussed in the first HAMP post, you shouldn’t have any lasting problems. But unless you become the manager for every profile you care about, you won’t have the same freedom to edit and update information that you have on other platforms.

    Harmonizing Tips:

    Wherever you decide your “one-stop shop” should be, Find-A-Grave will inevitably be a part of your research. There are several things you can do to help improve the completeness and the utility of the database that can make it more useful and reliable. If you refer to the Nancy Ellen Shriver Witter image above, you’ll see four words to the right of the “Find a Grave” logo:

    Memorials – Cemeteries – Famous – Contribute

    Clicking “Contribute” can get you started – you can add memorials from here, manage your photo requests and suggested edits, upload photos (read the TOS, first!), and get involved Transcribing photos on the site.

    • If you are one of those marvelous people willing to volunteer to visit cemeteries in your area and fulfill photo requests, adding GPS information to the memorials is an important part of that project. Click on “Cemeteries” to see open requests at cemeteries in your area. And check out “Five Easy Steps for Better Grave Stone Photography” by David Shaw at Serengenity to make your contributions count.
    • Transcribing headstone photos can be a huge help, especially with photos that may be hard to read due to lighting or the condition of the headstones.

    And, of course, the Virtual Cemeteries feature lets you organize the memorials you frequently visit, or that you have an interest in. I’ve used this to organize my search for the gravesites of my 28 grand/great-grand/and 2nd-great-grandparents.

    My Great 28 collection

    (You may have noticed I only have 26 out of the 28 here – I am still missing Emil Frey and his wife Emily Amelia Opp.)

    Next up…

    In the next HAMP installment, I plan to take a look at FamilySearch.org – a free site with lots of records and a “one family tree” feature that requires some close attention. If you have a favorite site you’d like to talk about in a future post, comment or use the Contact Form. I’d love to hear from you!

    1. Note: I am writing from an American perspective – I know I have an audience in Australia and Europe, so if you have different experiences with Find-A-Grave, or if there is a better resource for grave markers in the rest of the world, please leave a comment or send me a note. ↩︎