Longevity: Mary Aretha Johns and Lester Arthur Flynn

The Nebraska State Journal.
Sunday, April 2, 1939, pg. D6.

This week's #52ancestors prompt is longevity. Of course, a long life is what immediately comes to mind for most people when they think of longevity. It also refers to a long continuance, or permanence and durability.¹

Not many of my ancestors had longevity, in the traditional sense. Oh, there were plenty who lived well into their eighties, and just a few into their nineties. None, that I have encountered so far, that broke the century mark!

So, my thoughts turned in a different direction to long and durable marriages. Mary Aretha Johns and Lester Arthur Flynn immediately came to mind because of this wonderful newspaper account I found in a Nebraska newspaper. It detailed so many extended family members who had gathered for a fiftieth-anniversary celebration for Mary and Lester in 1939. Of course, it also perpetuated a few errors, as well!

For many years this newspaper article was as close to a possible marriage date for Mary and Lester I was able to get. Eventually, the actual marriage record would be added to Ancestry.com's collection.² Seeing the record solved a long-standing mystery, namely where the name of Mary Keely had originated for Mary's mother. Unfortunately, Keely was not Mary's mother's maiden name, but it would take years, serendipity and the intersection of several people's research to confirm it was actually Grainger.

Marriage record for Lester Arthur Flynn and Mary Johns, 23 March 1889, Seward, Nebraska.

The other reason Mary and Lester quickly came to mind, is the wonderful pair of bookend photographs I have of them that illustrate that fifty-year span. I don't know the exact date of the photo on the left, but it was likely fairly early in their marriage. The photo on the right is Mary and Lester in 1939. Within a couple of years of their Golden Anniversary, Mary and Lester would move to California to be nearer to their son, Arthur. Mary died in 1945 and Lester in 1951.^3,4 Both are buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, in Glendale, one of the first cemeteries to the stars!

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References:

1. Merriam-Webster Dictionary: longevity.
2. Nebraska, Marriage Records, 1855-1908. Ancestry.com. 
3. Mary Aretha Johns Flynn, 1871-1945. Find A Grave.com.
4. Lester Arthur Flynn, 1866-1951. Find A Grave.com.

Favorite Photo: #52ancestors

With Lois Smith Ney, about 1967.

Just one week into the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks and I am convinced this week's prompt will be the most difficult one for the entire year... write about a favorite photo. 

I have been agonizing and overthinking this for a week. Regardless of what photo I considered I finally realized the theme was the same... the importance of my grandparents to my childhood. Both sets of grandparents lived in the then-small town where my parents met and graduated from high school, bisected by the Northern Pacific railroad. Of course, who exactly lived on the wrong side of the tracks is another question.

According to MapQuest their homes were 1.5 miles apart. In some respects, however, it might have been a million miles. My paternal grandparents were eminently practical, while my maternal grandparents were decidedly less so. They differed in other ways too, Lutheran vs. Catholic, for starters. Yet all four provided indelible memories for their grandchildren. Each was creative in their own way. My paternal grandmother cocooned us, literally, with a steady stream of afghans and sweaters. Her love was expressed through food; mashed potatoes, pot roast and an inventive array of jello salads which contained everything from shredded carrots to marshmallows. My grandfather, a welder by trade, did woodworking and metal work and a variety of other hobbies that used his extensive ability to repurpose just about anything. He also painted; landscapes in particular. A picture of cows on a wooded path that hung in their living room is one of the first things I think of when I think of their tiny house, originally just 20x20 feet.

My maternal grandmother, in my opinion, could do just about any creative thing she set her mind to in my opinion. A masterful seamstress, she sewed beautiful clothes. She made me a treasured dollhouse filled with hand-painted furniture. She was less interested in housekeeping, however, and all that entailed. Summer visits with her meant I could eat Pop-Tarts for dinner. We got our ears pierced together when I was about 13, despite my mother's veto. It was years before I understood her vacuum was a Kirby, not named Kirby. By then it was too late, I had taken to naming things like cars -- Ernie -- and a variety of other inanimate objects. My grandfather was the life of the party, too much so for many years. But from him, I learned it's never too late to change and one can reinvent yourself in your third act. He and my grandmother were both crazy for Christmas. Their living room was the site of many Christmas dinners with a table created from plywood over sawhorses to make room for everyone... including my paternal grandparents despite the fact neither set quite approved of the other!

So, despite the fact, there are a number of photographs I could have chosen, the one I ended up with is a picture of me with my maternal grandmother taken when I was about 3. But really it is representative of a number I could have chosen. The roads all lead the same place, however, back to that small town where so many of my childhood memories reside. All my love and gratitude to Darlene and Bob, and Lois and Nick, for being quintessential grandparents, each in your own unique way. You are missed.

Start: #52ancestors

Rhoda Ellen Cryder Smith (and friend)
1886-1972

Fifty-two ancestors in 52 weeks.

That's the mission should you choose to accept it. Well, I do! Just one week into the new year, I am already feeling like this year will be especially busy, so why take this on now? Have you ever noticed you're more productive and efficient the busier you are? Well, that definitely applies to me when I don't have time to procrastinate! So, whether it is in spite of -- or inspired by -- an already busy year I have added Amy Johnson Crow's 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge to my list of goals for this year.

What is 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks, you may be thinking. To quote Amy it is "a series of weekly prompts to get you to think about an ancestor and share something about them. The guesswork of "who should I write about" is taken care of." The prompt for Week 1 is "Start." I didn't have to ponder this for more that a second or two before decided to start with how I got started with genealogy in the first place.

My family moved quite a bit as I was growing up and maybe longing for a "place" contributed to what made genealogy interesting to me, but the truth is I was intrigued by my ancestors before I even knew the word genealogy. I was fortunate live near both sets of grandparents when I was very young. My favorite pasttime when visiting my maternal grandmother was to get out an old suitcase full of photographs and pore over them, asking "Who's this?" "Where was this?" and many other questions. For me, that suitcase contained a treasure more precious than gold or rubies. 

Oregon Sentinel (Jacksonville, OR).
24 July 1886, pg. 2.

Later we had moved to a state that was experiencing a lot of unwelcome migration from other parts of the country. The state was issuing a ceremonial certificate for "natives" and my 5th grade teacher suggested we do that as part of a school project. Not having been born in that state, I wasn't eligible and I went home and complained about this to my mother. Now, whatever gene I inherited that made me interested in my ancestors, skipped a generation because my mother does not share this passion. She did, however, know that my great grandmother had been born in that state and encouraged me to ask my "native" classmates how many of them could make that claim. That was a much smaller group and made me feel better about having a nomadic childhood. I still had roots! 

Galvanized by this tidbit of information, I was prompted to write to a great uncle who sent me a hand-drawn family tree. Suddenly names of people I'd never met were connected to me on a chart. It would be another decade, however, before I was able to pursue genealogy in a more dedicated way. After graduating from college, one of my dearest friends, Monika, and I decided to take a genealogy class together. This was long before the internet, so every Tuesday evening, fortified by dinner at Arby's first, we decamped to the local Family History Center to do research using microfilm we'd borrowed from the Family History Library in Salt Lake City. Suddenly all those faces from the old suitcase and names from the hand-drawn tree began to come into focus. I was on my way!