Born on the Fourth of July!

The dapper young man pictured here is our very own Yankee Doodle Dandy, Arthur Clinton Smith, my great-grandfather.

Born on the 4th of July, 1883, to Mary Emilia Brower and Ezekiel Smith, 'Clint' — as he was more commonly known — was born in Mendocino County, California. The third, and middle, of five children, Clint's siblings included older brother Harry and sister Clara, followed by John and Lola.

The Brower and Smith families were early settlers of Potter Valley, a small community about 18 miles north of Ukiah. Racehorse Seabiscuit has the distinction of being Potter Valley's most famous {part-time} resident.

His maternal grandfather, John Daniel Brower, was a 49er, having journeyed by sail around Cape Horn and arriving in San Francisco in August of 1849. His paternal grandmother, Sarah Smith, left all that was familiar in Missouri and traveled overland to California in 1857, following several of her children.

Clint's early years were spent in Potter Valley, in typical Western fashion... farming, stock raising and attending a one-room schoolhouse. In 1899, at the age of 16, his life took a turn towards the unexpected. His mother, Mary, left her husband, uprooted her children, and moved to Honolulu where the family was enumerated at the time of the 1900 census.¹

Her reasons for leaving aren't entirely clear, but clear enough to her husband who sought a divorce based on desertion shortly thereafter. The Smith family only spent a couple of years in Hawaii, but family tradition has it Clint worked for the Matson Navigation Company — traveling to Australia and the South Pacific — before returning to California.

The timing of his return was ill-fated, however, as he was back in San Francisco for the disastrous earthquake on April 18, 1906. Supposedly desiring a more stable terra firma was one of the contributing factors that led him to Idaho. It was there he met Rhoda Ellen Cryder, my great-grandmother, and they were married July 19, 1908, in Twin Falls, Idaho. Three sons; Albert, Ralph and John, and a daughter Lois, my grandmother, followed.

By all accounts, Clint established himself as a successful farmer and the family enjoyed a comfortable life. But it was not to be a long life. Clint died of a heart attack at the dinner table just days after his 46th birthday while visiting with friends. My grandmother was just 13 years old. Her brothers ranged in age from 7 to 20. Clint's father had died years before, but his mother, Mary, had the sad misfortune of outliving four of her five children.

I often contemplate those moments in life you look back on and recognize as turning points when your life would never be the same and Clint's death was one such moment for his devastated family. But today — along with America's 240th birthday — I am celebrating Arthur Clinton Smith, our "real live nephew of my Uncle Sam, born on the Fourth of July."
                                                     

1. Twelfth Census of the United States, 1900. Honolulu, Oahu, Hawaii Territory; NARA T623-1836; Enumeration District: 0011, pg. 17A, line 12; Emilia Smith.

ROOTS, revisited

If you are of a certain age (cough, cough) you may remember watching Roots in January of 1977. Following on the heels of America's Bicentennial, Roots brought the untold story of an American family bound by slavery to television in a sweeping saga spanning eight nights.

The miniseries genre was relatively new to television. The first miniseries, QB VII aired in 1974, followed by Shōgun and Rich Man, Poor Man. Telling a serialized story was certainly not a new phenomenon, Alexandre Dumas and Charles Dickens were masters of the genre. And, Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin was one of the first American stories to be told in this format. But it was still a novelty to television. 

When Roots aired in 1977, nearly 85 percent of American homes watched some part of the eight-night event recounting the saga of Kunta Kinte (played by actor LeVar Burton) and his descendants. The series finale had 100 million viewers, a staggering number long before most Americans had VCRs or any of the myriad of replay options available today. All told, Roots was watched by an estimated 130 million viewers, an incredible feat given the U.S. population at the time was 221 million. The series led to an amazing spike of interest in genealogy that carries through to today.

I was one of those viewers back in 1977; on the edge of my seat following the story that was unlike anything I'd ever seen before. Despite the pain and suffering it depicted, I was inspired and uplifted by this testament to endurance.

Now the History Channel is retelling the story for a new generation of viewers. With so many entertainment options — streaming, on demand, and more — there is no way this Roots can capture the same viewership as it did in 1977. Regardless, I hope its reach is vast and inspires a new generation to research their family history.

When asked to characterize why Roots struck such a resonant chord with so many Congresswoman Barbara Jordan replied "Everything converged — the right time, the right story, and the right form." There was something magical about the way the nation was held enthralled by Roots and because of that memory I will be glued to my TV every night this week watching this new telling in real time. I encourage you to do the same.

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A lot of ink has been devoted over the past couple of weeks to trying to explain the cultural impact of Roots then and now. Read more about it:

• Roots: Then and Now 
• Roots: A Cultural Force that Changed the Nation 
• Roots Remade for a New Era 
• Roots for a Black Lives Matter Era 
• Why America Forgot About ‘Roots’
• Remembering Alex Haley: ‘Roots,’ Kunta Kinte & Genealogy 

Is there no end to the fires?

firebug • noun, informal /ˈfī(ə)r bəɡ/
: a person who starts destructive fires

Sometimes you're just bobbing along randomly searching Ancestry when you come across something that causes your head to tilt and your eyes to bug out. I occasionally search my great-grandmother's maiden name, Uselding, just to see if anything new pops up in a sort of virtual serendipity. Imagine my surprise when I did this same search again recently and the word convict leapt off the page of results! 

Clicking through to the digitized record led me to prisoner 15691 (line 4 below), who I immediately recognized as my great-great uncle. But wait! The Luxembourgers were supposed to be the fine, upstanding side of my family. Darn it, another illusion shot to heck.

Iowa Consecutive Registers of Convicts, 1867-1970 [Ancestry.com]¹

Burlington Gazette (Iowa),
October 10, 1932, pg. 

John Uselding (left) First Communion. 

Holy Cross, Wisconsin, 1901.

So, just who was this firebug? The adorable first communicant pictured here, John Jerome Uselding, was the youngest of five children born to John Uselding and Catherine Lauters. The only boy after four girls, John was likely just a little big spoiled. He married Irma Bell Greif in the bride's hometown of Omaha, Nebraska, on July 28, 1915, and they had two daughters, Dorothy Marguerite and Catherine Julietta.

John was born and raised in Ozaukee County, Wisconsin, but by the 1915 Iowa state census, John was living in Aspinwall, Iowa, where he was manager of the lumberyard and grain elevator and employed by the Neola Elevator Company.²  The discovery of the prison register led me on a search of various digital newspaper sites and the article above was similar to one published in papers throughout the Midwest. I speculated on what might have caused John to set the fire he was imprisoned for and envisioned quite a melodramatic scenario about the family finding themselves in dire circumstances during the Depression... but the reality was far more incredible -- and sinister-- than anything I could have imagined.

A centennial history of Aspinwall provides a wealth of detail about the elevator and lumberyard where John worked.³  As detailed in the town's history, after moving to Aspinwall in 1914, John Uselding was particularly unlucky with respect to fires, losing several homes, livestock and more. And yet, the family's clothes were all at the cleaners when one of these fires occurred. The children's toys were at their grandparents and other coincidences that no longer seemed to be quite that when John was arrested for arson on October 9, 1932.

The Uselding home burned to the ground on September 23, 1932, their third to be lost to fire. Despite the fact the home was heavily mortgaged and John was behind on his payments, suspicion didn't immediately fall on him because he'd been in Omaha on business sixty miles away. But law enforcement learned he'd received a speeding ticket in a nearby town that evening. As it turns out, John took the train to Omaha, rented a car and drove back to Aspinwall to set the fire and received the ticket on his way back to Omaha. What a web of deceit!

Unfortunately John's motives are lost to time and this story was, as well, as I had certainly never heard a hint about it. Convicted of insurance fraud, John seems to have been looking for a way to solve financial difficulties. Had he and his family been living beyond their means? Was he a serial arsonist? He was just convicted for one fire although confessed to others. There are many unanswered questions and the mystery confounded the people of Aspinwall, as well:

Some people say Mr. Uselding was caught after fire #13; others say he was a scapegoat, and after confessing to one fire, "he was blamed for every fire we've ever had in these parts"; still others say the fires were accidental and that Mr. Uselding was a victim of a very strange set of circumstances.

Despite receiving a five-year sentence to the Iowa State Penitentiary in Fort Madison, John was paroled just eighteen months later, in April of 1934, as indicated on the prison register. By October, 1934, the family was living in Dowagiac, Michigan, and presumably their streak of bad luck in losing homes to fire had ended.
                                                     

1. Iowa Consecutive Registers of Convicts, 1867-1970 [Ancestry.com]. J.J. Uselding, prisoner 15691, Iowa State Penitentiary, Fort Madison, admission 10 October 1932. 
2. Ancestry.com. Iowa, State Census Collection, 1836-1925 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2007. J.J. Neslding. Aspinwall, Crawford County, Iowa, 1915. 
3. Stammer, Nancy. The History of Aspinwall, 1882-1982. Odebolt, Iowa : Miller Print. & Pub., 1982. [online]. 

​

Clearing the wilderness was too heavy...

At the Edge of the Orchard
by Tracy Chevalier, 2016

"After his marriage¹ he left Washington for the Ohio county. He built a cabin and made his home in Delaware County about 80 miles south of the present city of Cleveland, Ohio. But he was sick much of the time, for one thing the water did not agree with him, another, the labor of clearing the wilderness was too heavy for him. So they drove back to Connecticut, the wife driving with the two babies² and the sick husband on a mattress in the wagon."

The above quote provides a brief glimpse into the lives of my fourth great-grandparents, William Ferris Calhoun (1811-1881) and his wife Lemira Esther Tracy (1815-1893). William and Lemira left their Connecticut home — and their extended families — and headed west where they were enumerated in the 1840 census.³ Unlike other settlers who sacrificed everything to forge a new home in the wilderness, the Calhouns returned to the relative comfort of Connecticut.

In Tracy Chevalier's At the Edge of the Orchard, Sadie and James Goodenough also leave Connecticut in search of opportunity. The novel begins in 1838 as the couple and their five surviving children are attempting to eke out a living in the Great Black Swamp in the northwestern corner of Ohio. One of the conditions for proving up on their land is an orchard of fifty producing fruit trees.

James has a deep nostalgia for sweet apples — a Pitmaston Pineapple to be exact — while Sadie has developed a taste for the apple jack alcohol made from tart apples as a way to cope with their harsh hardscrabble life. Their differing views on what to plant has James and Sadie locked in a bitter power struggle which leads to disastrous consequences for the entire Goodenough family. Real-life character Johnny 'Appleseed' Chapman provides the catalytic foil in the battle between James and Sadie. 

Years later the story picks up with their youngest son, Robert, as he meanders across the country as far west as he can go: California. While there he hears tell of some giant trees and eventually sets out to see them... the Calaveras Grove of Sequoias and in the process begins to reconcile his tragic past and rekindles his own love of trees.

Chevalier captures brilliantly the bone-crushing hardship, isolation and embittered struggle that I imagine my own ancestors might have faced as they attempted to carve out a new life for themselves. Unlike the Goodenoughs, the Calhouns succumbed to their disillusionment and returned to Connecticut. At the Edge of the Orchard is an essential read for anyone interested in immersing themselves in frontier life and the tenacity, forebearance and, ultimately, hope necessary for survival.

                                                     

1. Washington Vital Records, 1779-1854. The Barbour Collection of Connecticut Town Vital Records, Vol 1-55. Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1994-2002. William F. Calhoun and Lemira E. Tracey, 29 Sep 1839, Washington Connecticut. 
2. The story of the Calhouns of Judea, Connecticut (in 1779 renamed Washington, Connecticut) by Mildred Ida Brannon Calhoun, 1956. Mary Clarissa Calhoun, born 18 Feb 1841 and Esther Lemira Tracy, born 15 Aug 1842, in Delaware County, Ohio. 
3. "United States Census, 1840," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XHYV-HZF : accessed 23 April 2016), William Colhoun, Brown Township, Delaware, Ohio, United States; citing p. 211, NARA microfilm publication M704, roll 391. 

Slaves in the Family

I recently had the opportunity to attend -- and speak at -- the joint Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association annual conference, which was held in Seattle. For the first time the conference included a track dedicated to genealogy. The presentations were fascinating and diverse; ranging from analyzing popular family history-related television to personal experiences researching ancestors. My co-presenter, Jill Morelli, and I presented on four hundred years of genealogy in America and the motives and impetus behind several key peaks in interest.

As the day progressed an interesting sub-theme emerged regarding slaveholders and the people they enslaved, particularly in light of actor Ben Affleck's request to leave out mention of his own slaveholding ancestors in an episode of Finding Your Roots. The story infamously came to light during the Sony email hack in late 2014. The presentations and ensuing discussion got me thinking again about my own slaveholding ancestors.

Sometimes the universe provides grace in preparation for something unexpected and unwelcome. That's exactly what happened to me when I was inexplicably drawn to read Edward Ball's Slaves in the Family. I thought there was good chance I might have slave owners on my paternal side, which goes back ten generations in North Carolina. Not soon after reading Ball's book, however, I learned of a slaveholding family on my maternal side when it was revealed in a probate record that my ancestor, Sarah Smith, went court to retain ownership of several slaves as part of her dower right following the death of her husband in 1849. I found this discovery far more devastating than if it had been the expected North Carolina branch.*

As requested, Ned (Edward) and Laura were set aside as Sarah's dower right.  At the time, the Smith family slaves included Jane and child Caroline, Mary, Edward (aka Ned), Mary, Joanne (d. 1851) and Lorra/Laura.

1850 Slave Schedule, Nodaway Township, Andrew County, Missouri

Five of the family's slaves were sold in August, 1853, and Ned and Laura were sold in March, 1857, because of the "family leaving for California". (After an intense debate California had been admitted to the union in 1850 as a free state.) At the time of the 1853 sale there was also a two-year-old named Charles and a 6-week-old child of Jane, both sold to S. L. Gant. Based on information in Andrew County records, I believe the seven individuals listed in the 1850 slave schedule¹ pictured above to be:

Name        Age   Gender    1850:         Sold to:      
Jane         22   Female    Sarah Smith   S. L. Gant
Mary         10   Female    Sarah Smith   V. B. Wood
Edward        8     Male    Sarah Smith   John P. Smith
Molly/Mary*   6   Female    Sarah Smith   Wm. Fulkerson
Laura*        5   Female    Sarah Smith   John P. Smith
Caroline*     3   Female    Sarah Smith   S. L. Gant
Joanne        1   Female    Sarah Smith   Died in 1851
     * = Mulatto

Aside from the Tar Heels, I had naively deluded myself into thinking my family was free of the taint of slavery because they were largely Midwesterners who'd migrated from the Northeast. Edward Ball's unvarnished look at his own family's history provided me with a useful road map for beginning to understand the legacy of slavery. While -- just like Ben Affleck -- I still wish I didn't have slaveholding ancestors it pretty much makes me a quintessential American.

This legacy, as much as my Quaker roots, or any of my other branches, when combined tells the complex, flawed story that is America. After the Affleck debacle If You Only Read One Book About the Legacy of Slavery: ‘Slaves in the Family’ was one of the many editorial pieces which appeared.  Like the writer, I found this book to be the first step towards confronting my complicated legacy. I am still searching for descendants of the Smith family slaves. Because they were sold out of the family in the 1850s I have to first find them in the 1860 slave schedule with another owner -- again unnamed with only an estimated age as a clue --  and then hopefully as freed people in 1870. The surname Smith only compounds an already challenging task, but it remains some of the most important family research I will ever do.

-----------------

1. 1850 U. S. census, Andrew County, Missouri, slave schedule, Nodaway Township, p. 212, Sarah Smith, head; NARA microfilm publication M432, roll 422.

*Curiously, I have yet to find a slaveholder among my North Carolina ancestors. 

Genealogy Goes to the Movies

I recently had the opportunity to see Brooklyn at a local theater and was struck by many thoughts and questions as I considered my own ancestors who left behind all that was familiar in order to make a new life for themselves in America.

The film follows Eilis Lacey, a young woman from County Wexford, Ireland, who immigrates to Brooklyn in 1952. Eilis is wracked with homesickness and grapples with all the nuances of assimilating to life in New York. When circumstances unexpectedly take her back to Ireland, just as she is gaining her footing in America, the question becomes where does her future lie?

Anyone with an interest in family history will appreciate this film for its exploration of what it means to be American and what you're giving up in the process. The social conventions she knows and her provincial experiences in Ireland leave Eilis ill-prepared to deal with a variety of situations she encounters in bustling New York. The film raised many questions for me about how much anyone knows what they are getting into when they undertake such a venture and what happens when you become disillusioned or worse off than where you came from.

The film got me thinking, as well, about what other films genealogists would feel an affinity for and I came up with a list of a dozen that fit the bill for me. Like Eilis' story, all tackle the isolation immigrants experience, the unsettling anxiety that comes from not knowing the norms and culture of the society you're entering and how your identity is forever changed as you assimilate.

One of the most iconic films on the list is The Emigrants, starring Liv Ullmann and Max Von Sydow, and its sequel, The New Land. This film depicts -- with grim detail -- the push-and-full factors influencing why people immigrated to America. The hardship doesn't end upon their arrival and the second movie follows the family as they begin to carve out a new life for themselves in Minnesota.

Miss Rose White, a Hallmark Hall of Fame production, tells the story of a young woman who immigrated as a child whose life -- and her careful American facade -- is disrupted when her older sister immigrates years later. It explores the attitudes of those who came before and some of the reasons they were so anxious to maintain a distance from newer immigrants. 

Avalon explores immigration and assimilation across three generations. Immigrant Sam is dismayed with his children and their attitudes towards their heritage -- including Americanizing their names -- as he struggles to bridge both the old country and the new; old traditions and new. Conversely his grandchildren, the next generation, become more interested in their heritage. These are just a few of the movies I have enjoyed that have led me to ponder what it was like for my immigrant ancestors. How did they feel about leaving their homeland? Joy? Sorrow? Fear? All of the above?

Now we're a nomadic, global population and rootless is a word that often describes people today, living far from the family and places where they grew up. Chances are many can't even point to a just a single place they call their hometown. Yet there is nothing new about this desire for adventure and seeking a better life elsewhere. Our doughty and intrepid ancestors did all that and more long before Skype and Facetime, and a myriad of other social media apps, were developed which help make the distances between loved ones seem small today.

Go my Pinterest board, Genealogy at the Movies, to see the complete list. Check it out and let me know if there are others you'd recommend!

Be it resolved...

"And now we welcome the new year, full of things that have never been." – Rainier Maria Rilke

I am a list maker... there I've admitted it. I love lists. I love making them and I love crossing things off. That's one of the big reasons I love New Year's. I look forward to making resolutions because a) it involves a list and b) mine are generally things I really want to do, not things I should do, if you know what I mean. The past couple of years have been a bit hectic so I wanted to sit down and really think about what I would like to accomplish this year and make it so!

So what do I hope to do this year, genealogically-speaking?

I am going to the Family History Library in Salt Lake City next month, my first visit in over 6 years. I am busy making lists (more lists!) of what I want to research while I am there. Keeping that momentum going is first on my list!

I made a major leap over a brick wall last summer with the discovery of the court record documenting my great-great-great-great grandparents' divorce in 1846. I want to continue to explore leads relating to Mariam Williams Kirkendoll and her daughter, Caroline Kirkendoll, who seem to have disappeared following the divorce.

A project I've long wanted to get to and now have the necessary technology to accomplish is to scan and transcribe the typewritten memoirs of my great-great grandmother, Christina Belle Shultz Younker. Her recollections are rich with detail, exaggeration, omission and all the elements of a great story and I'd like to make it accessible on the web for others to read.  

Related to Miriam above, it's time to reexamine my other brick walls, write up what I currently know and develop a research plan. One which may involve turning certain aspects over to a professional.

My stalwart website dedicated to Luxembourg-American Genealogy Research, FamiLux, is long overdue for an overhaul and to be brought into the 21st century. Now that so much information is so easily accessible through web searching, refining my scope and focusing more on research strategies is something I am looking forward to far more than checking dead links, which has been taking up most of my web site time up until now.

On the topic of sharing more of my successes, I am also looking forward to blogging about more of my research in short vignettes to pass information along to distant cousins but also as a means to reconnect with what I know, how I know it and what I wish I knew.

Finally, a couple of eminently practical tasks I want to tackle this year:

It's time to review all of my backup schedules, clean up my Dropbox, Google Docs, and other cloud files. I want to spend some time refining my naming conventions for files and getting my digital genealogy organized, labeled and accessible.

A surprise end-of-the-year announcement from Ancestry means that I will also need to spend some time exploring alternatives to Family Tree Maker this year. Back in the olden days, I loved PAF. FTM has been a serviceable program through the years, but now it's time to up the ante and seek out a more robust program better equipped for where I want to take my research in the future.

There are a myriad of posts about making genealogy resolutions just like mine and I read through quite a few for inspiration as well as reality checks. A couple that stand out are Organizing Your Genealogy Research for its pragmatic suggestions. And I enjoyed two from Colonial Roots, Five Resolutions for Genealogy and Five More Genealogy Resolutions for their reminders to get back to applying your best practices to your research.

What's on your list this year?

Determining the Dash

Gertrude Vef (l) and Catharine Younker (r), circa 1900.

Living the dash, the idea that the most important details of the story of someone's life are encompassed in the dash between their birth and death dates, e.g. 1850-1936, is an important part of what motivates family historians. (Read Linda Ellis' The Dash, if you're not familiar with it!)

But sometimes determining those anchoring dates for our ancestors can be challenging! Catharine "Katie" Thomas Kibel Younker's headstone includes her date of birth, 18 September 1834, but no death date and trying to narrow it down to a range of years was a project that took years!¹

At the turn of the 20th century, twice-widowed Katie can be found living with her younger sister, Gertrude, also widowed, in Logan County, Illinois, where Catharine moved with her first husband, John Kibel, about 1864.² Kibel died in 1868 and two years later she married my great-great-great grandfather John Hubertus Younker in Logan County on September 8, 1870 and they were enumerated there in the 1880 census.³

Atlanta Argus (Atlanta, Illinois), 
31 May 1912, pg. 1.

Katie and John moved to Nebraska in the mid-1880's and John died there in 1886.⁴ Eventually Katie moved back to Illinois but the loss of the 1890 census makes determining exactly when difficult. John Younker was a veteran of the Civil War (Co. B, 5th Illinois Cavalry), but Katie does not appear in Nebraska's veterans census and the corresponding Illinois schedule was lost. As mentioned, by 1900 Katie is living in Illinois again with her younger sister Gertrude. A decade later 75-year-old Katie is living with a married daughter in Oklahoma.⁵ The discovery of "deceased" written on a returned pension check postmarked in 1912 in Katie's widow's pension file finally helped pinpoint an approximate date of death since pension checks were mailed quarterly.⁶

A distant cousin posted a transcription of Katie's obituary which appeared in an Illinois newspaper but it didn't include a date or the name of the newspaper. On a hunch, I borrowed the Atlanta Argus through interlibrary loan and began a page-by-page search beginning in January of 1912. Finally an obituary exactly matching the transcript was located at the end of May.

Despite several requests, an Oklahoma death certificate has not been located nor has searching available Oklahoma newspapers added any clues. But after years of not knowing when Katie died finally knowing mid-May 1912, feels like a major accomplishment!

                                                     

1. Catharine Thomas Kibel Younker. Find A Grave Memorial 7525363.
2. Twelfth Census of the United States, 1900. Eminence, Logan, Illinois; NARA T623- 311; Enumeration District: 32, Page: 2A, Line: 10; ---- Junker, sister.
3. Tenth Census of the United States, 1880. Eminence, Logan, Illinois; NARA T9- 227; Enumeration District: 48, Page: 240C, Line: 35; John H. Yonker.
4. John Hubertus Younker. Find A Grave Memorial 40315565.
5. Thirteenth Census of the United States, 1910. Earlsboro, Pottawatomie, Oklahoma; NARA T624-1271; Enumeration District: 209, Page: 10A, Line: 20; Catharine Junker, mother-in-law.
6. Catharine Younker, widow's pension application no. 468,000; service of John H. Younker (Blacksmith., Co. B, 5th Illinois Cavalry, Civil War); Civil War Widows and Other Dependents Pension Files, 1861-1934. Department of Veterans Affairs, Record Group 15; National Archives, Washington D.C.