GeneaGator

Monday, April 8, 2019

#52Ancestors: Brick Wall

Brick Wall! If ever there was a concept every genealogist could relate to this is it. Those dead ends in our family tree languishing without the essential clues necessary to enable us to answer those fundamental questions we're all searching for such as "Who are the parents?" and "How did they get here?"

One such brick wall in my own research was my third great grandmother, Katie Thomas. For years all I really knew about her was her name and that supposedly she was born in Germany. I knew her son, my great-great grandfather, John Hubert Younker, was born in Illinois and, from the census, I was able to theorize she had likely been married previously.

Eventually, I connected with a distant cousin descended from one of the children from her first marriage. He was able to provide important details about her life in the United States before she married my great-great-great grandfather, also named John Hubert, but he didn't know anything about her life before immigrating, either.

I located the marriage of Katie and John Hubert in 1870 in Logan County, Illinois, using old-fashioned footwork, scrolling through a microfilm page-by-page. John Younker is not an entirely unique name and tracking a single man with a dearth of other clues made researching him inconclusive.

Discovering John Hubert Sr. was a veteran of the Civil War, and the subsequent pension file I ordered from the National Archives and Records Administration, provided relatively scant information but I was able to glean one essential detail from a returned envelope for Katie's pension check. Her address was crossed out and "deceased" was scrawled across the envelope. The envelope was postmarked January of 1913, giving me an approximate window for when she died, information which had eluded me thus far. Her headstone frustratingly gives only her date of birth.

Katie didn't have it easy after her second husband, John, died in 1886. His pension file revealed she made several attempts to receive a widow's pension. So marginal was her existence in the 1900 census, all that is recorded is her last name!

I knew from earlier records that Katie had a sister Gertrude close in age who also immigrated from Germany about the same time she did, and with whom she resided in 1900. There are so many spelling variations for Younker, that as more Illinois newspapers were digitized I also made sure to regularly search Gertrude's married name, Vef, as there were fewer spellings to consider. Remember your FAN Club! Especially when researching your female ancestors. All too often the detail that smashes the brick wall comes from broadening your search! Which is exactly what happened with Katie.

I located a social item in a newspaper mentioning a man named E. H. Thomas had visited with his aunt Gertrude Vef. Thomas!? Did another sibling -- a brother, perhaps -- also immigrate? Sure enough, researching E. H. (Elmer Herman) led to his father, Conrad. Details I was able to uncover about Conrad Thomas led me to a family tree on MyHeritage submitted by a woman located in Germany.

Finally, I had a family for Katie. Searching Archion, the German digital archives site, led to civil records for several generations of the Thomas family. Tenacity, leveraging all the information available to me, and the addition of new digital resources all contributed to my eventual success in determining who Katie's parents were. There are still unanswered questions, when she immigrated, for example, but her story has grown to far beyond a birthdate on a headstone.

Anna Gertrude Thomas Vef (l) and Anna Catharina Thomas Kible Younker, (r) circa 1900.
Marriage record of Mrs. Catharine Kaible and John H. Yunker, 8 September 1870.

Thursday, April 4, 2019

#52Ancestors: In the News

Newspapers are such a wonderful source for details about the lives of our ancestors. Even when we don't find articles specifically about every individual in our family there are so many other insights to be gained about the times our ancestors lived in.

One such example is Hezzie Carter Purdom. Daughter of one of the first women practitioners of osteopathy, Hezzie also became a doctor, as well. Her husband, Frederic Everett Moore, a native of California, attended the same Kirksville, Missouri osteopathy school as Hezzie. They were married in Kansas City on June 1, 1903, and shortly thereafter set up a joint practice in LaGrande, Oregon. Eventually, they moved their practice to Portland. At some point, however, they became expatriates in France, where Hezzie apparently finally reached her limit with dear old Fred.*

They were divorced in Paris on June 15, 1927. Hezzie wasn't content with her newly-minted divorce decree, however. According to a wire story picked up by dozens of newspapers across the country, Hezzie further distanced herself from her former husband by having divorce announcements printed. Described as a tasteful lavender, the scented cards clarified she was now an independent woman, and that she had severed her relationship with Fred both personally and professionally.

Fred would die in France just two years later. His sister arranged for his remains to be returned to the United States, where he is buried at Lakewood Cemetery in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Hezzie died in San Bernardino, California, in 1941. She was buried alongside her family at Forest Hill Cemetery in Kansas City. A woman ahead of her times in so many ways!

* For the curious, dear old Fred is my first cousin, four times removed!

Thursday, March 21, 2019

#52Ancestors: 12

The Future Genealogist

Twelve, twelve, twelve... what to write about? Since last week's #52Ancestors prompt was "large", I didn't necessarily want to write about another oversize family so soon. I'm not a huge Seattle Seahawks fan, so that particular 12 was out. I finally found my inspiration when I was reminiscing with a friend about elementary school and was reminded I was 12 years old when wrote my first genealogy query letter, and began to lay the foundation for my future passion for genealogy.

It was 1976, a heady time to be contemplating family history. Yep, I'm a Bicentennial baby, when it comes to genealogy research. Who remembers the Freedom Train which traversed the country with artifacts from America's first 200 years? I do! Not only was the United States celebrating its independence from England, but the publication of Alex Haley's Roots was also gripping readers for its depiction of the experiences of generations of an African-American family from slavery to freedom.

I have written about some elements of how I became interested in family history previously, but to recap I was interested in genealogy long before I understood there was a word for venerating your ancestors. In my case, it arrived in the form of photographs in an old suitcase at my grandmother's house which I regularly perused.

Eventually – fed up with my many questions most likely – my grandmother suggested I write to her brother Ralph and ask him for additional information. At first, I thought I was hearing things. Write to Uncle Ralph!? Are you kidding me? The same Uncle Ralph who was the childhood nemesis in many of my grandmother's stories? The brother closest in age to her, and therefore each other's biggest tormenter? That Uncle Ralph?

Once I realized she was serious, I did as she suggested and my great-uncle wrote back with many details, and more importantly, a pedigree chart he had hand-sketched that I would study over the coming the years with great intensity. As I was then in sixth grade, I didn't have many opportunities to pursue some of these details further until I was older but it was always there in the back of my mind. I listened intently for any new detail mentioned in the stories my grandparents, aunts, and uncles told. Like a squirrel hoarding its acorns, I filed away all these little nuggets of information until the time was right for me to pick up that pedigree chart again in earnest! Thank you, Uncle Ralph, for that wonderful start. Maybe brothers aren't always so bad, after all!

Inspired by those tantalizing details from my great uncle and wanting to know more, I remember reading my first genealogy how-to book, Jeane Eddy Westin's Finding Your Roots, published in 1977. I learned all kinds of new things like how some surnames were based in historical occupations and how to fill out a pedigree chart. I also learned about how different cultures have traditional naming patterns and starting with "attic archeology" to gather was information you already have.

I read about the mysterious Family History Library, in Salt Lake City, Utah, and their vast collection of microfilm. At the time I couldn't even fathom what that meant or how invaluable it would come to be to my research. By today's standards the book now seems both quaint and antiquated, but at the time it was my first glimpse into the world of genealogy. My 12-year-old self was poised with her nose pressed to the glass just burning with anticipation waiting for the virtual door to the past to open!

References:

A later edition of Finding Your Roots is available from Internet Archive if you want to remind yourself – or learn! – what genealogy research was like before the World Wide Web and mass digitization!

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