Down the Rabbit Hole in Search of Extended Family

Who are her people?  Because we don't have a clue.

When confronted with jobs that I have never done, should not do, or have vowed never to do again, Cookie's stock answer is "How hard could that be?"

It has brought me to great acclaim as an author of local and regional histories, but it has also gotten me in trouble when I should know better.  When it comes to genealogy challenges, well reader, you are about to find out.

About three weeks ago, Cookie's second cousin, twice removed, sent me a stack of photos saved from her family home after the fire that led to the house's demolition.

Both she and her sister, one in her eighties, the other in her seventies, decided that they would rather tear down the gorgeous and gracious Tudor manor house designed by there father for their mother.  Thefire had done significant damage rather than see it fall into the hands of someone who would screw it up.

And living in the world in which  Millenials want to paint every surface white, grey and black, and after seeing what the two 30 somethings did to our former house in Columbus, I totally get where they are coming from.  If I owned a house like that I would die if I ever saw the half timbers striped away and the place vinyl sided, or worse, left to fall apart when someone with stars in their eyes bought it, only to discover that a quick trip to Lowe's wasn't going to cut it.

The sisters had these twenty cabinet cards (1880s-1890s) and carte de vistes (1850-1870s) that survived the fire in the house, and she asked if I wanted them.  I said "Sure" and they came to me.

About six were from our shared family, but the other folks were from her great grandmother's family.  In a small rural area, where your family has been for almost 200 years, you get to know people, and we talk about their people as well.  When one hears "who are their people," you know that the old women are talking about interlopers with 100 years or less.

And Cookie feels strongly that in this age of easy digitization, that phots should be reunited with family members.

So, like an idiot, and with a "How hard can it be" attitude, I started tracing the family lines.

I had done some work on the line about two years ago when another cousin sent me a picture of a dinner held in Glendale in 1927 and there were two people that we couldn't name.

The cousins and I struggled with figuring it out.

Cookie: Its uncle Mel and aunt Ell's* anniversary party."
Cousin in Ohio: "Are you sure? 
Cookie: "Yes, thats what is written on the back copy that belonged to Mel and Ell."
Cousin in Michigan: "Is that Aunt Mina? But who is the man? Uncle Cal is over there."
Cousin in Ohio: "It can't be Aunt Mina seated because she's standing next to Cousin Ole**."
Cousin Michigan and Cookie: "Oh, yeah.  Could it be..."

And then we discovered that the couple we're relatives, but family friends, Mattie and George.

"Well, that settles that," said Michigan.

Well, said I, not really. "Why are they there at a family dinner?  I mean Ohio to California for someone else's anniversary in an age when travel wasn't a snap...you know."

"Oh, yeah...."

Turned out that Mattie was the great aunt of the sisters who had given the images to me, through their paternal grandmother who died young.  She was childhood friends with Mel's sister, who had also made the trek from Ohio to California.  Ohio folks sticking together.  Thank God for Newspapers.com

So I put that all away thinking we would never find out anything more until these pictures showed up.  And back down the rabbit hole, I went.

Now, if your people are from "Smalltown", Ohio, from 1850 on, a family takes me about a day with down and dirty speed genealogy.   Easy peasy, and like the idiot that I am, I took this on.

Except, the whole thing turned in an adventure into Genealogy Wonderland, a place where nothing and no one is where they ought to be.  Names were topsy-turvey, marriages - the type that are "until death do us part," were mired in sloppy divorces, and people divorced claimed to be widowed.

One branch traveled from Ohio to New Jersey to Dayton (the Silicon Valley of the 1910s), to Illinois (where a few of them split off for South Dakota) then Montana to Ohio within the span of fewer than ten years, all the while depositing their dead in multiple cemeteries.  ALL of that between 1900 and 1910.

Who does that?

Answer: NO ONE BACK THEN.

And if that wasn't enough, then they went to California!  Their rail road ticket costs must have been outrageous! (Thank God, not New York.  Researching certain things in New York can be a colossal cluster from afar.  Not always, but enough experience has taught me to say prayers that our ancestors mostly stayed out of New York.)

There are name changes, too.  Cookie is used to surname spelling evolutions.  My father's surname is one that has evolved over time.

So this line has surname ends in "mor".  But these folks played fast and loose there, too.  Some converted to "more", some to "mer" and "imer". Another found three different way to spell the name in the plural!  And we're not talking about a hard for the American mind and tongue to wrap themselves around like Lukoševičius, or MacEòghainn, either.   Theirs was a pretty straight forward German last name.  But sweet smoking Jesus, there was variety, even within the same household.

Finally, I hit pay dirt and found someone killed in the East Ohio Gas Disaster of 1944.  And I had an anchoring place from which to start casting some lines.  I did find the deceased gentleman's grandchildren, who would love copies of the pictures.  Awesome!

But there were other lines, and of course, no one I reached out every remembered Grandfather or Grandmother, Father or mother ever talking about their people.

I did feel very bad for the man killed in the gas explosion, and I felt bad for his wife - her father killed himself on the beach.

And that's what happens sometimes - you work these lines to the point of obsession.  Its a logic puzzle, you just have to solve for "X" or "Y".

I even found one man who ran a movie theater outside of Mansfield, Ohio who died while running the movie projector in the theater that he operated. The only way people knew what happened was employees who went to the projection booth to find out why the reel with Greta Garbo jumping in front of the train was started.  And there he was, dead like Anna Karenina, not under a train, but on top of the tenth reel.

And once you find where ALL of these folks are buried, you have to link them together on Find A Grave, too, and then post their pictures.

So I have paired as many people with their pictures, linked multiple spouses, and next week I ship off hard copies of this stuff to the family members that I can find.

I still have pictures of people related to this family and no idea who they are.  The writing on the back of the images is of no help:

"Uncle John's cousin Martha's twins."

Except for the fact that Cousin Martha never had twins since she would have been sixty when the picture of the toddlers was taken and had spent the last 45 years in a convent in Quebec as Sister Mary Maria.

But I will work this.  All of it.  I will find who those twins belong too.  After all, how hard can that be?  And if not now, then a couple years.  So out of the rabbit hole, I come, for now.

I would like to say then I will have time for myself, but the fact is, I won't.  This really is my passion.  And it's my sickness because once you catch the genealogy bug, there is no cure.


*Yes, Mel and Ell.

**Cousin "Ole" - of Swedish nationality -  who married a woman named Olive, but was nicknamed "Ollie", so you have a married couple named Ole and Ollie.  I won't even go into the triples, Faith, Hope, Charity.