Shakin' the Family Tree

I'm posting this in case it helps researchers who have roots in Gloucester, MA. The article is sourced to this publication.

ILLEGITIMATE BIRTHS IN GLOUCESTER, MA, 1855 – 1894
The term “illegitimacy” is derived from the Latin illegitimus, meaning “not in accordance with the law.”
A child is considered illegitimate when it is conceived and born outside of the regulatory sanctions of
marriage.

In order to facilitate genealogical research the Gloucester, Massachusetts, City Archive department is in
the process of building a series of data bases of the births, marriages, and deaths that took place in
Gloucester in the last half of the 19th century. As we entered birth information into this data base we
wondered what became of those children identified as ‘illegitimate.’ The following is a result of those
ruminations.

Please note that the figures provided are not conclusive, as during the period 1860 to 1875 the legal
status of the child was only sporadically noted in the official records – an interesting fact in and of itself.

Also, at the time of this survey, deaths were only available in an easily searchable format for the years
between 1851 and 1873. Obtaining the figures from 1874 to 1894 would have consumed more time than
was available to this researcher. Nonetheless, certain conclusions can still be drawn from the easily
obtainable records.

Illegitimate births accounted for less than 1% of the overall births in Gloucester during the thirty-nine
years spanned by the survey, and were equally divided between the sexes (108 boys and 107 girls). This
figure seems extraordinarily low compared, for instance, to the year 2000 when approximately 26% of
all births in Massachusetts were recorded as illegitimate. However, one must take into account various
social factors. Firstly, an exhaustive comparison of marriage dates with birth dates during the survey
years would undoubtedly show that there were many illegitimate conceptions that became legitimate
births by the hasty marriage of the parents; an event much less likely to occur today. Secondly, with the
demise of the “stigma of illegitimacy,” there is a growing trend in the 21st century for unmarried career
women in their twenties and thirties to deliberately have children out of wedlock.

All of the figures collected and cases cited are a matter of public record, but ancestral illegitimacy can
still be a sensitive issue for some. I have therefore only used first names when identifying individuals in
this overview.

There were several long standing and unsupported assumptions about these children and their parents
that we believed the survey would confirm. It turned out that this was often not the case.

Of the 215 illegitimate children born in Gloucester between 1855 and 1894 almost one quarter died
before they were two years old, compared to the city’s overall infant mortality rate of 16%, with the
boys dying twice as frequently as the girls. The most frequent single cause of death was stillbirth, which
at 22% of the deaths was slightly more than that of the general population. The second highest cause of
death was from Cholera Infantum, a fatal form of gastroenteritis occurring in the summer months and
attributed to “hot weather and poor milk.” Not surprisingly, death from Cholera Infantum within the
illegitimate population was twice as high as it was among the overall deaths. On the other hand
dysentery, a disease often associated with poverty, was not listed as a cause of death among the
illegitimate children at all, but was the second highest mortality figure from disease in the general
population.

Here are three cases of stillbirth:
Martha was seventeen, a domestic servant in an elderly widow’s house, when her baby was stillborn. Belle, aged twenty-seven, had been thrown out of her parents house and was living at the Poor House when her baby was stillborn. John was due to appear in court accused of impregnating a woman out of wedlock, but his son was stillborn, and the case dismissed.

And five cases of death from Cholera Infantum:
William’s mother died when he was nine days old from Puerperal Fever and he succumbed to Cholera Infantum eleven months later. John died of Cholera Infantum when he was nine months old and his father died of Phthisis the same day. Georgianna died at sixteen months of age, shortly after her mother got married. Estelle, whose mother was just sixteen, died at the age of five months. Edgar, who had just been adopted, was three months old when he succumbed.

Of the 165 surviving illegitimate children, 65 were untraceable (33 of the boys and 32 of the girls),
usually accompanied by the disappearance of the mother. We had presumed that the majority of these
missing women were not Cape Ann natives but ‘incomers’ working and living in town as domestic
servants, and that therefore, with no close family ties within the community, they had simply taken their
children and returned home. This proved not to be entirely true. While 62% of those working were
indeed employed as domestic servants, the number of missing mothers born in Gloucester (22) was
almost equal to the number from Nova Scotia and vicinity (23). The locally born women presumably
had a support system of parents, siblings, aunts and uncles here to assist them, so why they disappear
from the official records (marriage, death and census) is not apparent, and remains an unanswered
question. The following are two such examples:

Esther, the fifth in a family of six children all born in Gloucester, was only sixteen when
she got pregnant. Her father had died almost a year earlier and an older sister was
married shortly after Esther’s confinement. Yet, despite a mother, three sisters and a
brother still at home, Esther and her baby disappear from all records.

Little Frank died when he was three months old. His mother, Emma, was twenty-three
and Gloucester born. Her mother, also Gloucester born, had died six years before, but
her father, four sisters and two brothers were still in town. Yet, after working for a year
as a domestic servant, Emma disappears from all records.

In certain instances the child disappeared from the records but the mother remained in the community,
leading to the supposition that the child had been adopted. But there were only 5 traceable adoptions.
Adoption in Massachusetts, where the first such statute had been enacted in 1851, officially required
judicial approval, consent of the child’s parent or guardian, and a finding that the prospective adoptive
family was of sufficient ability to raise the child. In reality, while consent was usually sought, the other
parameters were seldom adhered to and the records were often incomplete or absent. Sometimes the
adoption was done through the Overseers of the Poor, as in this case:

Alice was six years old and had been living at the Poor House since the death of her
mother two years previously. She was “boarded out” to, and then adopted by, a twenty-six year old single woman called Georgianna. The Overseers of the Poor were “confident that she [Georgianna] would, they judged, [do the] best for the good of the child” and therefore “disposed of her.” At the age of fourteen Alice was still living with Georgianna’s widowed mother and siblings, but Georgianna was no longer with them and
Alice herself disappears from the records soon after.

Sometimes the adoption appeared in the birth record:
Alena’s parents were married eleven days after her birth. It is not apparent why they did
so as it did not legitimize Alena’s birth and she was almost immediately adopted by a
childless couple whose names are appended to her birth record. Not surprisingly Alena’s
biological parents soon parted and went their separate ways. Alena grew up with her
adoptive parents, married a local fisherman and had children of her own.

Sometimes the record of an adoption appears almost by accident:
A couple, Edgar and Sarah, who never had any children of their own seem to have adopted or fostered several illegitimate children. At one time little Freddie, whose mother had just died, was “boarding” with them, before returning to his grandparents’ home. They later ‘adopted’, although no official papers have been found, another little boy who died as their son at the age of three months, and a little girl called Lillian who got pregnant herself at the age of thirteen.

Similarly, with a large and transient population of Canadian fishermen in town we had assumed that the
largest number of the fathers would be mariners from the Atlantic Maritimes. While the majority (43%)
were indeed fishermen, the commonest place of birth, regardless of profession, was in fact Cape Ann
(36%), with the Canadian born men coming in a very close second at 34%.

Those fathers not fishermen were mostly employed in manual labor (36%), but a surprising number
(13%) were involved in such service industries as shops and offices, while 5% fell into the professional
category. Notable amongst these latter were two who later became physicians, and a clergyman.
William was an unmarried twenty-three year old blacksmith when his daughter was stillborn. He quickly left Gloucester to attend college, obtained a medical degree and opened a practice in a nearby town. Apart from a few years as a medical officer during World War I he remained there for the rest of his life and never married.

Thomas was from Nova Scotia and working on the fish wharves in Gloucester before he
also took off for college and earned a degree in medicine. However, he returned to marry
a Gloucester girl (not the mother of his illegitimate daughter) before moving to Boston
where he set up his practice.

Edward was a forty-six year old clergyman when he succumbed to temptation and fathered a child out of wedlock. At the time both he and the child’s mother, Delia, were married to other people. In fact, Edward had been the officiating minister at Delia’s wedding. She apparently became so enamored of him that she left her husband and followed Edward out of town when he moved to a new congregation. Two years later she returned to Gloucester, pregnant and destitute. She stayed at the Poor House until her husband took her back and the baby, a boy, died as her husband’s son a few months later.

Edward left the ministry for a brief time, finding work as a traveling salesman in toiletries, but was once again a clergyman when he died at the age of eighty. The women, having fewer jobs open to them anyway, came closer to our expectations in that the majority of them were menial workers either in private homes or manufacturing firms. But 15% of them were dressmakers, a step up on the social scale, and one was a bookkeeper. Mary was working in the Net & Twine factory when she became pregnant at the age of
eighteen. She married a Gloucester fisherman about two years later and went on to have four more children.
Agnes was from Prince Edward Island and running her own dressmaking business at twenty when she had her daughter. She married an apothecary and also had more children before moving out of town. Alice’s baby probably died at, or shortly after, birth and Alice, who was twenty at the time, never married and worked as a bookkeeper until her father died and she stayed home to care for her mother.

We had also expected that most of the parents would be young people in their teens and twenties. This
did prove to be true with 60% of the mothers and 52% of the fathers being aged between seventeen and
twenty-five. However, 10% of the mothers were under sixteen and 19% of the fathers were over thirtyfive. The youngest girl was fifteen; the youngest boy sixteen. The oldest woman was forty-four; the oldest man sixty-seven.

Eliza was just fifteen when she gave birth to Ida. Ida’s father was just sixteen. Given the young age of her parents it is not surprising that Ida was reared by her maternal grandparents, nor that she named them as her parents when she married.

Youth was not always detrimental to the relationship:
Estelle’s mother was sixteen and her father eighteen. It was, however, true love. They waited three more years before getting married and then remained together through eight more children and into old age.
Most of the older women were probably taken advantage of in that they were often lonely widows. Albion’s mother was a widow with three children at the time of his birth, her husband having died a soldier in the Civil War two years previously. She applied for a military pension but was listed among the Gloucester Paupers several years later. She remained a widow and at the age of sixty-three was a washerwoman taking care of two of her granddaughters.

Some were not widows, just trusting and gullible souls. William’s mother, Clara, was a forty-four year old unmarried woman identified as “simple minded” by the Overseers of the Poor. She had already had another illegitimate child, a daughter, whose father was a married man and the father of five. This child had
been taken in by relatives before she had William, but he was not so fortunate and when he was eight he was sent to the Little Wanderers Home in Boston.

It was often the older men who were taking the advantages.
Joseph’s father was a sixty-seven year old peddler from Nova Scotia, twice widowed and twice the age of Joseph’s mother who was a thirty-three year old widow from Scotland working as his housekeeper. They never married and the peddler died six years later. Then again, sometimes who was taking advantage of whom is debatable.

Sarah was forty-four, a widow and the mother of five when her husband died at sea. She was under the care of the Overseers of the Poor for a brief time, who classified her as “idiotic.” She was, however, smart enough to have an affair with a man half her age (and younger than two of her children) and marry him after the birth of their son. The marriage lasted until her death twenty-five years later.

About one quarter of the parents remained single, with the mother rearing the child within her extended
family or assisted by the Overseers of the Poor (11%). These latter cases often resulted in accusations of
bastardy being brought against the purported fathers (17 cases) because a guilty finding would lay the
expense of maintaining the child on the father, and not on the city or state, as stipulated in a law enacted
in Massachusetts in 1860:
When a woman who has been delivered of a bastard child, or is pregnant with a child
which if born alive may be a bastard, makes a complaint to a justice of the peace or
police court, and desires to institute a prosecution against the person whom she accuses
of being the father of the child, the justice or court shall take her accusation and
examination, in writing under oath, respecting the person accused, the time when and
place where the complainant was begotten with child, and under such circumstances as
the justice or court deems necessary for the discovery of the truth of such accusation.
The justice or court may issue a warrant against the party accused … [and] may after due
hearing require the accused to give bond with sufficient sureties … if the jury find him
guilty … [he] shall stand charged with the maintenance thereof, with the assistance of the
mother, in such manner as the court shall order … No complaint shall be withdrawn,
dismissed, or settled by agreement of the mother and the putative father, without the
consent of the overseers of the poor of the city or town in which she has her settlement …
unless provision is made to the satisfaction of the court, to relieve, and indemnify any
parent, guardian, city, town, or the state from all charges that have accrued or may
accrue for the maintenance of the child. Chapter 72: of the maintenance of bastard children. General Statutes of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 1860, pp.404-406.

William was somewhat of a reprobate. He was arrested for bastardy two days after his son was born, but he married another woman a year later (about one week before their first child was born) and was arrested for fornication along with several others, men and women, in a house of “ill fame” on Hancock Street a few months later.

Martha was from Nova Scotia, a servant living in a boarding house when she got pregnant. Fearful of her support defaulting to them, the Overseers of the Poor persuaded her to accuse her child’s father of bastardy and he was arrested three days after their daughter was born. Despite a steady job working for the Gloucester Water Supply Co., he quickly skipped town and went to Maine.

Lizzie had already spent time in the Poor House so when she found herself pregnant again she accused the baby’s father of bastardy. They were quickly married but her new husband died within a few months and she found herself back in the Poor House with her new born baby.

Annie had Charles arrested for bastardy and the case was “settled” by Annie and Charles getting married a week after their baby was born. However, three years later Charles married again, claiming it to be his first marriage, and Annie disappeared from the records.

Of the remainder, 23 married the other parent of the child, while 36 of the men and 63 of the women
married other people. A few (7 couples) had more than one child together without bothering to tie the
knot, while 4 of the women and 3 of the men had more than one child with more than one partner.
Lena’s parents, Maggie and Daniel, never married but lived together as a widowed householder and his housekeeper for many years and had five more children. They both died within two years of each other leaving “six orphan children, the oldest fourteen and the youngest three.”

For some, two children seems to have been either the magic number or the breaking point. John was a thirty-three year old fisherman boarding at widow Mary’s house when their daughter Edna was born. John and Mary did not marry. He remained a boarder in Mary’s house until the birth of their second child, at which point he moved out. Incidentally, perhaps because of their long-term relationship, this second child was not
registered as illegitimate.

Alex and Mary lived around the corner from each other with their respective families. Their first child was born when Alex was twenty-six and Mary twenty-two, their second three years later. They never married and Alex also moved out of town soon after the second child’s birth while Mary married a man who had boarded at her parents’ house for many years.

Two months before her baby was due Margaret had John arrested for bastardy. She had, perhaps, discovered that he was having an affair with another girl, who was also pregnant by him. Two years later all was forgiven and Margaret and John were married and they had several more children together before John died at sea. Margaret then had another illegitimate child before marrying Frank who was ten years her junior and not her latest child’s father.

Allen was accused of bastardy by Jane, who had a problem with alcohol and was living in the Poor House. Within a year Allen was named as the father of another child by a woman called Belle. He did not marry either of them and was lost from a dory while fishing shortly afterwards.

Every city is divided into neighborhoods that differ, at times dramatically, in their economic and social
condition. In Gloucester the rough, tough, working class area filled with transient fishermen, boarding
houses, bawdy houses and saloons was along the waterfront in the inner harbor, and that is where we
expected to find the largest number of unmarried parents living. This theory was not strictly upheld.
While almost three quarters of them lived in the central part of the town near all the activity, the largest
percentage were in an area several streets back from the gritty waterfront, bounded today by Rte 128 to
the north and east, Washington Street to the west and Prospect and Fair Streets to the south. And it was
in these neighborhoods that two of the women were arrested for breaking a law enacted in 1860 that was
probably intended as a discouragement for abortion, although their transgression did not arise from that.
The law stated:
If a woman conceals the death of any issue of her body, which, if born alive, would be a
bastard … [she] shall be punished by a fine not exceeding one hundred dollars, or by
imprisonment in the jail not exceeding one year.
Any woman indicted for the murder of her infant bastard child, may also be charged in
the same indictment with the offence described in the preceding section.
Chapter 165: offenses against chastity, morality, and decency. General Statutes of the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts, 1860, p. 818.

It was a surprisingly light sentence – with some apparent allowance for, and understanding of, the
peculiar and particular circumstances of these women.

Annie and Tena were both domestic servants; Annie in a private home on Liberty Street and Tena in a boarding house on Locust Street. Both had been born in Nova Scotia and both were alone, pregnant, and scared. Annie gave birth to her baby in the outhouse and left it there, its cries leading to its discovery by the daughter of the house about an hour later. Tena’s baby was found dead on the back yard ash pile by the boarding house
keeper. Both women were arrested and sent to trial. Annie for attempted murder and Tena for manslaughter. Annie pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of assault but does not seem to have served any time in jail. She kept and reared the child, got married, and had another child a few years later. Tena’s fate is not clear. At her court appearance she was described as being “weak and much agitated” claiming that the “author of her trouble” was one of the boarders in the house who was away at sea. What became of Tena and her absent lover has not been discovered.

Thirteen of the children were reared by their maternal grandparents, and in many cases these grandparents were named as their parents on marriage and death certificates. This may have meant that the children never knew their true parentage, or that they knew but chose to disregard it. Some named their mother’s deceased husbands as their fathers, even when the men referred to had died long before they were born. Others gave their stepfather’s name. Some, who married more than once, changed their minds between nuptials.

Lizzie’s mother died when Lizzie was two months old and she was cared for by her twice widowed grandmother. When Lizzie married she named her grandparents as her parents despite the fact that her grandfather (actually her grandmother’s second husband – so not her grandfather at all) had died five years before she was born.

When Guy was born his mother was Mary and his father unknown. He grew up in the home of his maternal grandparents, John and Jane, and when he married gave his parents as John and Jessie – a not totally accurate rendition of his grandparents’ names.

Both of Estelle’s parents moved out of town soon after her birth and Estelle was reared by her maternal grandparents. When she married at the age of nineteen she named her grandparents as her parents.

Adelle’s parents, Ella and Daniel, went their separate ways and Adelle first lived with her mother and her maternal grandparents Joseph and Elizabeth, and later with an aunt and uncle. When she was twenty-five and working as a domestic servant, she married, giving as her parents her mother Ella and her grandfather Joseph.

The 100 surviving and traceable children appear to have led lives as variable as the general population.
At the time of Josie’s birth her mother was a widow running a boarding house on Main Street and already had five other children. Josie worked there as a table girl until she married a salesman from New York City. Josie and her husband moved closer to Boston where Josie became an interior decorator and her husband had a china and glass store. By the early 1900s they had three children and were able to afford a servant.

Nathan started out his adult life as a fish skinner but had moved out of town and was a garage mechanic by the time he married. He and his wife were divorced about ten years later and he got custody of their daughter.

Albion married when he was twenty-three and had two children. Unfortunately he had a problem with alcohol, being arrested at least four times for drunkenness, and once being sent to Salem jail. He was a menial worker all his life with a variety of jobs: a night soil wagon driver, a highway department employee, a general laborer and a masons helper; and was widowed when in his fifties.

Hattie’s parents were married when she was ten months old but divorced seven years later. Hattie’s mother remarried and Hattie, who had become a dressmaker, continued to live with her mother and step-father until she married a young man who was a wagon driver. Ten years later Hattie and her husband had moved south of Boston where she was working as a forewoman in a “shirtwaist factory,” her husband had become a Life
Insurance agent, and they had a son.

Charles, whose father died in Danvers Lunatic Hospital when Charles was ten and whose mother had a second illegitimate child and married that child’s father, became a successful house painter, got married when he was twenty-one and had thirteen children.

Laurena lived with her mother, her grandmother, her half brother and an aunt. She remained single and became a saleslady working in department and millinery stores.

Chester lived with his mother and then his uncle and worked as a bookkeeper for the railroad and later for a life insurance company. He was in the US Army during the first World War and was twenty-seven when he got married. He and his wife, a teacher, and their children moved out of state before retiring to Florida.

John and George were half brothers. Their mother never married and neither did they. John became a fish worker and George a chauffeur and they continued to live together even after their mother’s death. They died twelve years apart, George first at the age of sixty-one and then John at seventy-eight.

Finally illegitimacy was a family affair for a few. The illegitimate daughters of four of the women grew
up to have illegitimate children of their own. Another four young women followed the example of their
older sisters in having children out of wedlock.

Both Hattie and her mother Mary were illegitimate. Mary was put out to service at the age of thirteen. She had Hattie when she was twenty-three and died four years later of phthisis. Hattie was then taken care of by her grandmother until she also died of phthisis, at the age of twenty-one.

Annie’s mother was a thirty-seven year old widow whose husband had died at sea ten years before. Her father was a married ex-naval officer with a young son. When she was fifteen Annie also had an illegitimate child – a son called Harry – before she married a fisherman from Maine. She did not have any more children.

Kate gave birth to an illegitimate daughter when she was twenty-one. Four years later her sister Mary, aged twenty, had an illegitimate son. Kate got married but Mary went on to have a second illegitimate son before marrying a French fisherman.

Charlotte was described as a “simpleton and intemperate” by the overseers of the Poor House where she was frequently sent despite having a fully employed husband. Her children sometimes accompanied her, and two of her daughters, Henrietta and Lizzie, were described as “idiotic.” Lizzie had three children out of wedlock, none of which appear to have survived infancy. Another of Charlotte’s daughters, Arabelle, who also went by the names Annie and Mabel, had an illegitimate child when she was nineteen.

When Mary was twenty-one she was working in a net factory and she and her one year old illegitimate son Henry were living with her widowed mother, her brother, her twentyseven year old sister Elizabeth and Elizabeth’s illegitimate son John. Elizabeth had another child a few years later and ended up in the Poor House suffering from “paralysis.” She and her children remained there for four years.

Some just kept having children:
At the age of twenty-six Annie was a seamstress living with her parents, two brothers, an aged aunt and her three illegitimate children: Waldo aged seven, Amy aged four and the baby John.

Another Annie had four illegitimate children, three before and one after a brief marriage that had ended with the death of her husband. Her first was born when she was twenty and the last when she was thirty-two.

Life was not easy for these children and their mothers but, at the risk of romanticizing them, I believe
that Polly Garter, in Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood, speaks for many of them, especially for the repeat offenders, when she says: "Nothing grows in our garden, only washing. And babies. And where’s their fathers live, my love? Over the hills and far away … you’re no better then you should be, Polly, and that’s good enough for me."

Stephanie Buck, Gloucester City Archives Volunteer, 2012
CHILD’S NAME
?, ?(f) 10/29/1866
Adams, ? (f) 10/3/1893 stillborn
Allen, Florence B. 3/3/1884
Almore, Frederic Gardner 1/5/1869
Anderson, Charles A. 11/7/1889
Anderson, Hattie 4/21/1881
Anderson, Mary 9/28/1857
Andrews, Bessie C. 9/18/1885
Baker, ? (f) 8/2/1889
Barrett, ? (m) 5/6/1891
Barter, ? (m) 6/1/1880
Bartlett, Adelle 3/22/1880
Bigwood, George C. 12/7/1889
Black, Geneva 12/16/1855
Blatchford, ? (m) 7/6/1869
Bray, Walter B. 12/20/1887
Brown, ? (m) 10/22/1858
Brown, Josie G. 4/22/1886 see Garrett
Burke, Sarah A. 10/3/1885
Burns, Minnie 11/28/1884
Cameron, Joseph 6/18/1880
Canfell [Canfield/Campful/Riley], John J.
10/2/1879
Cantrell, Arthur R. 5/19/1889 see Galant
Car, ? (m) 9/14/1866 residents of S. Danvers
Carlton, Mary A. 12/10/1888
Carter, Willis F. 1/1/1880
Caton, Madeline Mary 12/17/1893
Clapenburg, [Catherine?] (f) 1/28/1893
Clark, Alice M. 6/7/1886
Clark, John H. 12/10/1877
Clements, Edgar L. 6/29/1882 [born in
Lawrence]
Coakley, Daniel E. 5/3/1880
Collins, Mary A. 4/20/1868
Collum [White], Charles 4/4/1858
Connors [Thompson], Lizzie W. 8/19/1882
Cook, George 12/14/1884 see Randall
Cook, Grace G. 6/11/1877
Cronin, ? (m) 12/16/1892
Crowell, Helen May 8/22/1892
Cummings, Kate A. 9/22/1878
Daggett, Lottie [Charlotte] L. 1/26/1888
Dailey ?(m) [Edwin H.] 7/27/1876 see Dowling
Daley, Gertrude May 11/25/1891
Davis, ? 11/6/1884
Davis, Elizabeth (twin) 11/12/1858
Davis, Estella 10/14/1856
Davis, Mary (twin) 11/12/1858
Day, Charles A. 8/21/1883
Day, William 11/4/1884
Decost, ? (m) 4/13/1888
DeLourie, Martha J. 11/24/1884
Dennen, Fred 4/16/1880
Dennison, Caroline (twin) 1/4/1875
Dennison, Charles (twin) 1/4/1875
Dexter, Adeline 11/14/1891
Dexter, William Henry 10/15/1868 see Hanson
Dolliver, Frank E.W. 8/25/1879
Donahue, ? (f) 9/10/1888
Dorsey, George 12/7/1882
Doty, Edna 10/4/1888
Dowling [Dailey] ?(m) [Edwin H.] 7/27/1876
Duclow, Lewis H. 11/24/1879
Duley [Stevens], Georgianna [Mary J.] 5/10/1880
Eason, Sarah W. 4/17/1882
Ellery [Friend], William S. 4/6/1878
Ellis, Elsie 3/3/1882
Ellis, Nathaniel 1/22/1883
Emerson, ? (m) 12/22/1893
Enos, Manuel 6/22/1884
Flood, ? (f) 9/16/1885
Francis, Ida 10/3/1867
Frazier, Mary J. 5/30/1879
Freeman, Robert [3rd] 8/3/1857
Friend, Lena A. 12/6/1879
Friend, William S. Jr. 4/6/1878 see Ellery
Furbush, Josephine 9/25/1856
Galant [Cantrell], Arthur R. 5/19/1889
Garrett [Brown], Josie G. 4/22/1886
Gill, Rosa 12/29/1891
Gorman, Chester Leo 8/4/1893
Grant, William Henry 9/13/1893
Gray, Joseph H. [Henry] 1/7/1879 see Nelson
Greenleaf, Edith 7/24/1880
Griay, ? (m) 8/7/1883
Grimes, Simon A[lexander]. 8/16/1883
Grover, Edith A. 12/10/1878
Guare, James Daniel 7/9/1892
Haley, Laurena M. 7/29/1885 [illeg. erased]
Hanes, ? (f) 6/14/1888
Hanson [Dexter], William Henry 10/15/1868
Hastings, Annie 11/8/1878 see Mayo, Lizzie A.
Herrick, ? (f) [Alice?] 11/16/1890
Hickman, ? (m) 11/4/1889
Hillier, ? (f) 9/30/1859
Hodgkins, John E. 12/21/1875
Horton, Ernest Francis 12/31/1893
Howe, Mary E. 8/22/1882
Irving, Francis Michael 2/8/1893
Johnson, ? (m) 10/7/1893 stillborn
Johnson, Ruth 1/12/1893
Joice, Mary E. 11/16/1869
Kehoe, Daniel 11/24/1893
Kelly, Addie G. 12/4/1890
Landry, Alena [Lena] J. 10/9/1883
Lane, Florence M. 3/30/1881
Lasey, Augustus B. 11/17/1884
Lengner, Maud M. 10/24/1880
Livingston, John H. 5/27/1881
Lorenzen, Ida Alberta 9/16/1893
Lovett, ? (m) 2/13/1888
Lowey, Lillian M. 11/3/1890
Lufkin [Stacy], George August 4/9/1868
Lufkin, Annie 10/8/1877
Lufkin, Leona 12/4/1878 see Moore
Lurvey, ? (m) 6/4/1891
Maguire [Riley], Mary 4/23/1881
Maguire, Alex 5/18/1878
Malayson, ? (m) 9/24/1893
Malone, ? (m) 3/6/1881
Martell, Hattie[Harriet] 10/8/1891
Mayo, Lizzie A. [Annie Hastings] 11/8/1878
McClain [Wilson], ? (m) [Gertrude] [f] 4/21/1876
McDonald, ? (m) 4/21/1893 born Beverly, MA
McDonald, ? (m) 8/15/1881
McDonald, Joseph A. 10/27/1881
McDonald, Mary 5/29/1882
McEachern, Joseph F. 10/19/1882
McFadden, Earnest M. 5/4/1878
McGee, ? (m) 11/18/1857
McIntire, Lillie Francis (m) 7/13/1885
McKennon, Stella M. (m?) 8/9/1884
McLean, Henrietta 3/30/1885
McLean, Samuel E. 2/1/1885
McLellan, Janette [Josephine] 2/19/1880 see
Peoples
McLeod, Charles C. 7/22/1885
McQuarie [Symonds], ? [Estelle] 6/16/1883
Miller, ? (f) 11/5/1882
Miner, David Henry 11/28/1892
Moore [Lufkin], Leona 12/4/1878
Morris, Lillian B. 4/25/1884
Morrison, Annie May 9/1/1893
Mullen, ? (f) 6/19/1891
Muller, Maud 4/19/1869
Murphy, ? (f) 12/6/1885
Myers, Thomas A. 12/12/1878
Neal, ? (m) 1/4/1886
Nelson [Gray], Joseph H. [Henry] 1/7/1879
Norris, ? (m) 1/27/1882
Olsen, William 5/29/1877
Pakala, Mike 11/28/1892
Parker, Lillian 11/9/1884
Parsons, Gertrude 11/19/1889
Parsons, John 8/6/1890
Parsons, Mary E. 3/4/1885
Peoples [McLellan], Janette [Josephine]
2/19/1880
Peoples [Peeples], Ada 7/6/1891
Phelan, ? (m) 2/15/1880
Pool, ?[Amy B.] (f) 3/28/1876
Powers, Albion [Alvin] 7/26/1868
Powers, Henriette 3/21/1881
Pulcifer, Frank 3/4/1855
Quarrie, ? (m) 12/21/1889
Randall [Cook], George 12/14/1884
Rankin, Earnest V. 3/28/1881
Ratalla, Amos 12/3/1882
Richardson, ? (m) [Lester Warren] 11/22/1878
Riggs, Carrie E. 4/21/1887
Riley, John J. 10/2/1879 see Canfell
Riley, Mary 4/23/1881 see Maguire
Roberts, Ellen Arva 11/17/1892
Rogers, Guy B. 1/20/1881
Rust, William 10/10/1878
Ruth [Weeks], Theresa 5/23/1882
Sella, John 10/5/1889
Shackelford, Mabel 1/27/1880
Shehan, Alice 4/2/1891
Sherman, ? (m) 10/22/1859
Silva, Minnie 12/16/1882
Simmons, Oliver Anderson 10/7/1892 born
Tewksbury
Smith, ? (m) 7/10/1878
Smith, Nathan 6/6/1889
Snow, [Mary Ellen] [1/?/1873]
Stacy, George August 4/9/1868 see Lufkin
Steele, Charles 1/1/1874
Steele, Willie 2/23/1878
Stevens, Georgianna [Mary J.] 5/10/1880 see
Duley
Story, Eva M. 11/4/1883 see Torey
Symonds, ? [Estelle] 6/16/1883 see McQuarie
Tailor, Mary E. 6/15/1884
Tarr, (f) 5/15/1875
Tarr, Eva M. 11/4/1883 see Torey
Thompson, Lizzie W. 8/19/1882 see Connors
Titus, Edward A. 1/9/1881
Torey [Tarr/Story], Eva M. 11/4/1883
Trumbull, Winifred 7/10/1885
Tucker, ? (m) 11/4/1892 stillborn
Turner, Katie Ellen 8/23/1893
Verge, Harold F. 5/26/1890
Waggott, Estelle 1/12/1878
Weeks, Theresa 5/23/1882 see Ruth
Welch, James 1/1/1893 born McLean Hospital
Westerly, Charles E. 1/17/1856
Wheaton, Ernest R. 3/8/1885
White, Charles 4/4/1858 see Collum
White, James 5/20/1888
White, Willie O. 3/23/1889
Wilkins, Laura G. 5/24/1889
Williams, ? (m) 9/4/1884
Williams, Annie L. 4/18/1868
Williams, Antone J. 11/5/1884
Williams, Harry E. 11/11/1883
Wilson, ? (m) [Gertrude] [f] 4/21/1876 see McClain
Witham, Harry 7/2/1884
Wolf, Estelle 3/4/1881
Yokla, ? (m) 3/21/1890

Job Calloway's will recorded in Wilkes Co, GA Will Book 1806-1808, pgs 81-8:
"Georgia Wilkes County - In the name of God Amen Job Callaway of the county and State aforesaid being in sound mind and memory do hereby make this my last will and Testament revoking and disannulling all others made by me heretofore.

First I give my beloved wife Mary Callaway during her natural life my Negro man named Will and his wife Luce, my Negro man Sam and his wife Dinah my Negro man Gabe my Negro man Solomon My Negro woman named Crease My Negro woman big-Dole My Negro woman Abby my Negro boy Ted my negro boy Huson and my Negro boy Bill, one third of my sheep cattle and Hogs and one third of my Household and Kitchen furniture and one third of my plantation Tools and her choice of one of My Horses or mares I may die possessed of Likewise my dwelling House and all other Houses of the Plantation I live on with one third of the plantation and orchard.

Secondly I give and bequeath to my son Jacob Callaway the plantation and Tract of Land whereon he now liveth containing Five Hundred and fifty Eight Acres agreeable to a plot and survey made by Sanders Walker and which is annexed to this my will with the Negroes Jack, Talbot, Carol and h is child Henry to him his Heirs and assigns Likewise my Negro man named Solomon after my wifes death to him his heirs and assigns.

Thirdly I give and bequeath to my son Joseph Calley [sic-Callaway] all that tract or parcel of Land where on he now liveth containing five Hundred and fifty five [forty is written above the word fifty with fifty being crossed out] Acres agreeable to a plot and survey made by Sanders Walker and annexed to this my will the Negros Mark, Dave, Spencer and Rachell likewise my Negro man Gabriel after my wife's death.

Fourthly I give and bequeath to my son Job Callaway all that Tract or Parcel of Land on which he now liveth containing six hundred and fourteen Acres agreeable to a plot and survey made by Sanders Walker and annex ed with this will with the Negroes Sam, Charity, Silvey and his child Mintal and after my wife's death my Negro boy Bill to him his Heirs and assigns forever.

Fifthly I give and bequeath to my son Joshua Callaway all that tract or parcel of Land on which he now liveth containing six Hundred and sixty=s ix Acres agreeable to a plot and survey made by Sanders Walker and annexed to this will with the Negroes Noses, Nelson, Beck, and Tom and after my wife's Death my Negro boy Fred to him his heir and assigns.

Sixthly I give and bequeath to my son Isaac Callaway Two thirds of the Tract or parcel of Land in which I now live and on the death of my wife Mary Callaway the remaining third the whole Tract containing Five Hundred and Ninety-five acres agreeable to a plot and survey made by Sanders Walker and annexed to this my will also two hundred acres granted to John White and purchased of him by Sanders Walker and purchased by sons of Sanders Walker adjoining my home Tract with my two (b?)est Stills the casks and implements thereunto belonging with them Negros Mike, Sealey, Harvey and Ms [the word Ms has a circle around it] and after my wife's death my Negro man named Sam to him his heirs and assigns.

Seventhly My will is that If my wife Mary Callaway and my son Isaac Callaway cannot agree to a division of the Land agreeable to like intent of this my will that my Executors my sons Joseph Callaway and Job Callaway shall make such division which Shall be binding On the parties.

Eighthly I give and bequeath to my daughter Unice Griffin Five Negroes a Negro woman named Luce and her child Lewis, Stephen, Patience and Milly and after the death of my wife my Negro woman known by the name of Big-Dole to her heirs and assigns.

Ninthly I do make our and bequeath in Trust to my sons Joseph and Job Callaway all that had a parcel of Land containing Two-Hundred Acres which I purchased of Isaac Miligan and on which Wm. Park now liveth to be by them the said Joseph Callaway and Job Callaway Disposed of in the manner following, Viz. The use profits and emoluments thereof to be applied towards and fir the maintenance of my daughter Mary Parks and Her Children during her natural [life] and at their option to live on and keep possession of said Land during her natural Lifetime But she is by no means nor shall any person claiming said Land sell or Lease in virtue of her life Estate there to but by the consent and advice of said Trustees above named first have under their hands in writing with the Negro woman Called little Dole Joseph and Nancy Crite and Cato and after the death of my wife my Negro woman named Luce and at the decease of my daughter Nary Parks I do bequeath the above named Luce and Negroes with their issue to the Lawful Heirs of my said daughter Mary Parks that is her children born of her body and come to lawful age and if she should have no children that may arrive to lawful age then said Luce and Negroes to be sold and the amount of such sale to be equally divided amongst my remaining children and descendants.

10thly For the residue and remainder of all and every kind of my Estate it is my will that after my debts are Paid my Executors call on three a more reasonable Householder of the neighborhood who shall according to their skill and Judgment appraise and Value all such remaining property not divided which property so appraised and valued shall be divided in seven Lotts if such division can be made any wise practicable after which the Lotts to by seniority by my children and the Lott that falls to the Heirs of my daughter Mary Parks is to be put into the Hands of my Executors in trust to be managed to the best advantage to be disposed of i n the Same manner as the Land and Negroes for the support of my said daughter Mary Parks during her Life and at her decease to go to her Heirs coming to Lawful age.

Eleventhly This my will is that all that property divided to my wife during her life be at her death be appraised in the same manner at that property ordered to be appraised at my death and that it be divided and disposed of in the same manner this is one seventh to my son Joseph one seventh to my son Job One Seventh to my son Joshua One Seventh to my son Isaac One Seventh to my daughter Unicy Griffin and One Seventh to remain in the hands of my Executors for the Heirs of my daughter Mary Parks to be managed as a bon mentioned.

Twelfthly And it is my further will desire that If any doubts or misunderstand airs in the construction or intention of this my will that the Parties doubting or disagreeing shall choose two men of Judgment which t[?] women shall choose a third a majority which thou shall divide on the premises which division so made and subscribed under their Hands and Seals of said arbitrators shall be binding as If done in any court of Justice and for the carrying into Effect.
this my last will and Testament I do appoint my beloved wife Mary Callaway Executor and my sons Joseph Callaway and Job Callaway Executors.

In Witness whereof I have hereunto set my Hand and affixed my seal this 15th day of February Eighteen Hundred and three.
Signed and Sealed
In Presence of Job Callaway Senr, {seal}
Thos McLaughlin
Johnson Wellborn
Adam (his X mark) Lovin

Personally appeared in Open Court Thos McLaughlin, Johnson Wellborn and Adam Lovin the subscribing witnesses to the within will and being duly sworn saith that they saw Job Callaway Senr. Seal Publish and declare the within Instrument of writing to be his last will and Testament and at the time of his so doing he was of sound mind and memory and that Wm Wilborn and John Lovin heard him acknowledge the same to be his last will.
Sworn to in Open Court Thomas McLaughlin
this 5th March 1804 Johnson Wellborn
Da Terrell C Cords Adam [hisXmark] Lovin
Recorded July 28th 1805

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It's kind of amazing to me that Job continued to "own" the slaves in his will, down through the next generation.

He was 1) presuming people with black skin would always be slaves; and 2) that they would outlive the people to whom they had been willed, in a time when the lash flayed black skin regularly, and food and housing were lousy.

However, mining probate records is one way to help people descended from those slaves to find their ancestors.

Otis was buried by the members of the Vicksburg local typographical union. Although the Vicksburg Evening News reported that the family had contacted them and asked for his body to be held, thereby disrupting the funeral the day following his death, apparently they never came through. He is buried in Cedar Hill Cemetery in Vicksburg.

Virgil also died alone and was buried without the family. He died in 1911 at the Union Printers Home in Colorado Springs, and was buried in its section of Evergreen Cemetery in Colorado Springs. The number on his gravestone was 574.

---

I have never understood my Williamses when it comes to stuff like this. What on earth could have possessed four surviving siblings to have permitted the burials of their brothers to be handled by strangers?

Or maybe the people I'm calling strangers were their real families.

I hope I meet them on the other side.

I've always been on the lookout for information about the sons of my great great grandparents, Jacob Duffie Williams and Catharine C Mueller.

Lucien, Virgil, Urban Orville and Otis have been very elusive.

The Williams family Bible gives Lucien's date of death as 27 Dec 1900, but does not give a location.

Yesterday, I spent some time on newspapers.com and found this about Urban.


KENTUCKY KNOWLEDGE
...Urban Williams, a printer aged 30, was run over and killed by a train at Frankfort.

The newspaper was The Semi-Weekly Kentuckian, (Hopkinsville, KY), dated 31 Oct 1884, at page 2.

Urban Orville Williams was born on 21 Oct 1853, so if he was still 30, that means his death occured in October 1884, but before his birthday.

I can't find any Frankfort articles or any information about where he's buried.

Sometimes finding a date and place of death doesn't feel so good. But then,facts often don't, do they?

It's taken almost 7 years, but I finally found the parents of my great great grandmother, Catherine Mueller.

In 1832, Georg Jacob Mueller and Eva Elisabetha Hemberle moved their family from Blankenloch, Karlsruhe, Baden, Germany to the United States. They left Bremen aboard the ship Elisabeth and disembarked at New York on 5 Sep 1832. Georg Muller paid for his ticket - he was not sponsored. His destination when he left Germany was the United States of America. Accompanying Georg and Elisabetha were daughters Christine (age 11), Catherine (age 5), Elisabeth (age 2) and son, Jakob (age 6 months).

According to this website:
...For most German emigrants going to America during these years, Bremerhaven was the major port of departure. It would become port to 7 million emigrants leaving Europe between 1832 and 1874.

The first leg of an emigrant’s journey would have been the trip to Bremen itself by train or in a coach. Some poorer emigrants had to reach Bremen by foot. Many had never even set foot out of their small villages before, and just making this step was in itself a life-changing experience. Once in Bremen, most would stay at an inn and take in the sights...

From Blankenloch north to Bremen is 566.57 km, or 352.05 miles. That trip takes 5 and a half hours by car today. I have no idea how it took Georg and Elisabetha Mueller to get to Bremen in 1832, but my guess it that at least one overnight stay at an inn or making camp would have been required.

Once in Bremen (Bremerhaven), there was a three day journey on a river barge traveling down the Weser River to board their ship.
...The new harbor of Bremerhaven received its first customer in 1830, the American schooner Draper.

When Bremerhaven first opened, passengers would have to travel for miles down the Weser River from Bremen to Bremerhaven on crowded river barges, a journey taking three days, until they were brought to the side of their large sailing ship. The final stretch to the ship could only be taken during ebb tide, when water from the arm of the Weser flowed toward the North Sea... Sourced to the website above.

Once the ship left the harbor, it was weeks before America appeared in the immigrants' sight. The ship sailed into the North Sea and on to the English Channel, then out into the Atlantic Ocean.I don't know where the family settled after arriving in New York. I couldn't find them in the 1850 census. I do know that Catherine Mueller married a man named Bashett or Baskett before she married my great great grandfather Jacob Williams on 1 Oct 1846 in Shelby Co., KY.

I found Georg and Elisabetha Mueller in 1860 in Jackson, Monroe Co., PA. Living with them were a son William and a granddaughter Amelia (shown as Emma in the 1870 and 1880 censuses), both born in Pennsylvania. William was 17 years old, so it seems that by 1843, the family must have been living in Pennsylvania.

The 1860 census also shows that the family had Anglicized their names. Georg Jacob Mueller became George J Miller. Eva Elisabetha Hemberle was now Elizabeth Miller.

Three of Georg and Elisabetha's children did not make the journey from Baden to America. Three small sons - Jacob Friendrich Mueller, Christian Mueller, and Johann Jacob Mueller - all died before the trip. The first two died in 1824, and Johann Jacob Mueller died in 1830. All of the infants died in Baden.

It was not uncommon in the 19th century for parents to "recycle" a child's name if an older sibling died very young. In this family, Johann Jakob Mueller had the same name as his brother born four years before he was.

The youngest of Georg and Elisabetha Mueller's children was Sarah A Miller, born in Monroe County, PA., on 23 Oct 1843. She married Henry H Marvin and they had two sons. Henry died in 1868. Sarah followed him in death in 1872. Her parents raised their sons, Ira and Steward, who were 7 and 8 years old at the time of their mother's death.

Eva Elisabetha Hemberle, daughter of Georg Martin Hemberle and Christina Zorn, died on 18 Sep 1870 in Monroe County. Georg Jacob Mueller died on 7 Sep 1885. They are buried in Saint John's Cemetery, Neola, Monroe Co., PA.

And at last I have found great great grandmother Catherine C Mueller Williams' parents.

Another brick in the wall is gone.

---

Then, in my everlasting quest to find all of the children of my great great grandfather James Littleton Burris' other family, I doubled down on Richard Hill, since he was the last remaining child I needed to find.

And I found him. And his children. (I already knew he was married to Annie P Moore, daughter of William Newton Moore and Delila Mexico Young.)

The Hill brothers always knew they were really Burrises. I already knew that James L Hill - whom I seriously believe was named James Littleton Burris, Jr at birth - used the Burris name until he was at least 40 years old, after which he gave up, moved to Oklahoma and gave his surname as Hill.

Ervin Burris used the Burris surname all his life.

So, I said to myself, what if Richard changed his surname from Hill to Burris?

I found that by the time of the 1910 census, that's exactly what he did.

The children - six of them I have been able to document - seem to have a mix of surnames, with the oldest three using Hill and the younger three using Burris. This information is found in census records, so I haven't been able to find out yet if they continued the use of their original surnames as adults. Except for son Marion Hill, who died at the age of 19 on 19 Dec 1915 when the family was living in Fort Smith.

Richard began using Richard H (for Hill, I think) Burris on census records. His gravestone in Holdenville Cemetery, Hughes Co., OK says Richard M. Burris. Annie's says Annie P Burris.

So there, great great granddaddy. Unless the universe throws out another of your secret children, I believe I found them all.

Persistence pays off.

The journey is good.

In early February this year, I got an email saying, I am researching James Otis Burris' son, Carl H Burris. US Air Force, went missing on Aug 28 1963. Have you heard of him?

The only information I had in my family tree database about Carl Burris was date and place of birth, date of marriages to two wives, date of death, burial location, and that he was the son of James Otis Burris and Hazel Etta Coffman.

But there was so much more.

---

At first, I wondered if Carl had been shot down in Vietnam. According to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the official beginning of American involvement in Vietnam was on 1 Nov 1955, when Pres. Eisenhower deployed the Military Assistance Advisory Group to train the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN). By August 1963, after horrific attacks on protesting Buddhists by the ARVN, the US was threatening to withdraw aid to the South Vietnamese Special Forces if they were not sent into battle rather than repressing dissidents.

But that did not account for Carl Burris' disappearance. As is frequently the case, fact is stranger than fiction.

---

Newspaper accounts the day after Carl Burris' purported death help piece together the story.

From the Courier Post (Camden, NJ), 29 Aug 1963 at page 5:

Atlantic Is Searched For Two AF Jets Lost on Refueling Mission



...A large force of planes and ships searched the Atlantic between the Bahamas and Bermuda today for two Air Force jet tankers missing on a refueling flight with 11 men aboard...The K135 aircraft, attached to the Strategic Air Command, were returning to quarters at Homestead Air Force Base south of Miami when radio contact was lost with them yesterday afternoon.

They had refueled in the air two B47 jets from Schilling AFB in Kansas. The B47s returned safely to Schilling...

Palladium Item (Richmond, IN), 29 Aug 1963 at page 2:

Two Jet Tankers Believed Down In Atlantic; 11 Aboard



...The air force said the two tankers had enough fuel to remain airborne until about 7 p.m. EDT...

The Register-Guard (Eugene, OR), 29 Aug 1963, at page 2:

Plane Spots Oil Slick, Debris



...Radio contact was lost about noon Wednesday as the huge tankers returned toward Homestead. At that time, they were 800 miles northeast of Miami, or about 300 miles west of Bermuda...

---

The area described in all the news reports I found is commonly known as the Bermuda Triangle. There have been many unexplained disappearances of all kinds of ships and aircraft, documented as far back as Columbus' description of strange lights, and the sea rising up suddenly when the water had been calm and smooth.

As I continued to search, I also found research attributed to Larry Kusche (a critic of the phenomenon of the Bermuda Triangle) that said...the unclassified version of the Air Force investigation report stated that the debris field defining the second "crash site" was examined by a search and rescue ship, and found to be a mass of seaweed and driftwood tangled in an old buoy...

And then I found this:

On 28 August 1963, two KC-135 Stratotankers assigned to the 19th Bomb Wing (then at Homestead AFB, FL), completed their scheduled Reflex 33 air refueling with B-47s from Schilling AFB, Kansas (both of which landed safely) when contact with them was lost. It is believed they were conducting navigation exercises when both disappeared over the Atlantic between Bermuda and Nassau, all eleven crew aboard the two jets were lost. Debris and oil slicks were found ~750 miles ENE of Miami, Florida. The search was suspended Monday night, 2 September 1963, when wreckage recovered by the Air Rescue Service, and the Coast Guard cutter Owasco, 34 is positively identified as being from the missing tankers.
Injuries: All 11 crew killed
Crew killed:
A/C: Capt Donald G. Edson, 30
A/C: Capt Richard A. Larson, 34, Minneapolis
Capt Allan C. Ferguson, 29
Capt Gerard A. Garner, 28, Lincoln, NE
Capt Keith R. Goffin, 29, Bellevue, IL
Capt Julius O. Womack, 30, Pioneer, LA
1Lt Melvin C. Pump, 29
Lt William E. Smith, 26, Memphis, TN
BO: MSgt Carl H. Burris, 39
BO: TSgt Ray L. Fish, 30
SSgt Lyle E. Overlees, 25
Source: Voices From an Old Warrior, Christopher J B Hoctor, (publ. Espresso Book Machine, Mizzou Bookstore, Mizzou Publishing, University of Missouri, 2013), at page 31.

In a footnote to his work, Mr. Hoctor says:
The author does not subscribe to the many myths associated with ‘The Bermuda Triangle’. Not all these losses were inexplicable, and the boundaries of the ‘triangle’ are not clearly defined. In fact, a similar ‘triangle’ could be laid over almost any part of the earth’s oceans, marking the area of many lost aircraft and ships that have not been solved.

Bully for him. I don't believe in coincidence. So I guess we're even.

---

There is a Boom Operator Memorial at Altus Air Force Base in Oklahoma on which are inscribed the names of the men who perished on 28 Aug 1963. I obtained written permission from the photographer to use his photo of the memorial for Carl Houston Burris' Find a Grave memorial noting his burial in Westlawn Memorial Cemetery, Grand Island, NE, and here in this blog entry. The Find a Grave memorial notes a section and plot for burial, so there must be a centotaph stone there, because Carl Burris' remains were never recovered.


Photo of MSgt Carl Burris' name on the Boom Operator Memorial at Altus AFB in Oklahoma.
Photo used with written permission. The original can be found at this website.


Close-up of inscription for MSgt. Carl H Burris

---

Maybe I'll find out the truth, if I meet Carl on the other side.

Some Calloway cousins I never even knew I had came knocking...

A brother and two of his sisters, as well as one of his first cousins.

They are descendants of William Arnett Calloway and Fannie N Mahar/Maher. They use the variant spelling of the surname with an O instead of an A. William Arnett's surname on his gravestone is spelled C A L L A W A Y, so I expect either his son changed the spelling or the gravestone carver made an error.

I've spent some of the weekend talking on the phone, texting and emailing with all of them, who suspected when they found my online family tree that we must be related.

We are fourth cousins, 1X removed - or so says the relationship calculator in my genealogy database. Our common ancestors are John S T Callaway and Amy Stamps.

I've told them the story of the inauspicious beginnings of our eldest ancestor on this soil, Peter Callaway, and how a bastard child gave rise to the colonial dynasty that is now known by the Callaway Family Association as the Peter line.

There are already some twists, turns and a couple of brick walls in their extended families.

Let's start with Fannie N Mahar/Maher. I cannot for the life of me find her parents. I'm beginning to think she hatched.

But I expect it's more likely that her surname has been badly misspelled.

I'm delighted to be able to add C A L L O W A Y to my tags list.

Yesterday at the reunion, my cousin Doug Burris hauled out his box of old photographs to see if I could help him ID any of them. (I was pretty useless on his unknown photos.)

In that box were some real gems, not the least of which was an old tintype photo of Uncle Jeff (Jefferson William Burris, 1860-1941).


When I got home and started trying to date it, it reminded me of the one of GW Burris Sr., Uncle Jeff's older brother.

---

I think they sat for their photos at or around the same time. I always thought great granddad looked awful young in his tintype photo, so I hauled out my book, "Dressed for the Photographer," by Joan Severa) and had a look at men's clothing styles in the 1870s.

Based on coat length (a shortened version of what was known during the 1860s as a "sack coat"), type of tie, GW Sr.'s hat, and the pose the photographer had them both using, I'm going to date both photos from 1874-1877 (when GW Sr. got married).

Tintype photographs had their heyday during the Civil War, but were produced for up to 40 years after that. These photos were the type and size that would have been purchased during a carnival or fair. Perhaps the Pope County Fair?

Cousins, right click and save as you wish.

I've written before about looking for one thing, and finding another.

And so it was with Ollie Mable Kinzie.

I was at the Arkansas History Commission in mid-May, plowing through microfilm of old newspapers in 1914, and stumbled upon a very sad story. That story started me on a quest.

---

SAD SUICIDE OF FRIENDLESS GIRL
"NO HOME, NO MONEY, NO FRIENDS AND CAN'T GET WORK."
Little Rock - "No home, no money, no friends, and can't get work." In that terse, tear stained sentence she had hastily scrawled on a piece of paper which lay on the bed beside the body of pretty Mable Kinzie who had taken her own life in a rooming house at 215 West Third street at 12:00 o'clock Thursday afternoon is told the pathetic story of hardships, loneliness and final desperation that drove the friendless girl to swallow the contents of a vial of carbolic acid.

"I have been wandering friendless and penniless for weeks, and when my money ran out I could think of no other recourse by which to better this scheme of life than destroying it," read the farewell message. "My friends were not friends in times of trouble.The world was sweet when all went well, when I had money and work, but the cup of bitterness has blighted whatever sweetness there is in life for me and this is my time to leave." The letter was addressed to her sister, Mrs. Frank Bentley, at the Barnfield house, Texarkana.

"Miss Kinzie came to my house Monday afternoon," said Mrs. Willie O'Connor, who conducts the rooming house, "and paid me for one night and left her grip in the hall Tuesday afternoon when she went out in search of work. She didn't come back Tuesday night. Yesterday afternoon, I saw a light in the room she had formerly occupied. I knew that it should not be lighted at that time of day and went in the room not expecting to find anyone there.

"I saw Miss Kinzie lying on the bed, and supposing she was only asleep went over to the bed and began to shake her, and then I noticed the paleness of her face and called to her but she did not answer. Then I saw the note and thinking she might be saved I called a doctor who said she was dead. She couldn't have been dead very long when I entered the room."
Source: Southern Standard, Thursday, 14 May 1914.

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But even in death, Mable appeared to have no friends.

GIRL'S BODY UNCLAIMED
Couldn't Find Work; In Despair Ended Her life
Lifeless Form of Mabel Kinzie Still at Morgue
The body of pretty Mabel Kinzie, who ended her life Wednesday afternoon at 215 West Third street by swallowing the contents fo a bottle of carbolic acid because she was without funds, friendless and could not obtain work, still lies unclaimed at the Healey & Roth morgue.

In a note to her sister, Mrs. Frank Bentley of Texarkana, she said that her reason for taking her life was, "No home, no money, no friends, and can't get work." This sister was notified and said that her husband, Frank Bentley, would arrive in Little Rock yesterday afternoon to take charge of the body, but at a late hour last night Mr. Bentley had not appeared.

It is said that the girl is a native of Missouri and that her parents are living there now. Wednesday night Bentley did not announce the home of the girl's parents, and it is the belief of the local authorities that they have never been notified of their daughter's death, as no word has come from them.

The verdict of the coroner's jury last night was that the girl committed suicide. The investigation was conducted by Deputy Coroner Frank Martin.
Source: Arkansas Gazette, Friday, 8 May, 1914

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So now, I wondered if Mable was one of the people buried in a pauper's grave at Oakland & Fraternal Historic Cemetery Park - at that time, still the City Cemetery.

After waiting for two months for the Arkansas Department of Health to get its act together on the printing of the 1914 death certificate - apparently you have to have a special printer for those, and theirs needed parts, to which I finally said, PRINT THE FRICKING CERTIFICATE ALREADY! - I got it.

The Gazette must have gone to print before Mable's body was sent - probably by train - to Webb City, Missouri on 8 May 1914.

There are two cemeteries in Webb City, which is in Jasper County, the county of her birth in 1892. Her death certificate says she was born in Independence, and that she was 22 years old. The informant for the certificate was her sister, Mrs. Frank Bentley, who didn't know her own sister's date of birth.

One of those cemeteries is the Webb City Cemetery, and the other is Mount Hope Cemetery. I cannot find a grave for her, even using alternate surname spellings, in either cemetery. It's possible the grave was not marked, or it was and an online record of it just doesn't exist.

But I do know who her parents were - Charles Henry Kinzie and Mary A Kants/Koonts, both born in Indiana. I found Ollie Mable Kinzie living with her father and step-mother in the 1910 census in Carterville Ward 1, Jasper Co., MO. I know she had an older brother named John, but I can't find out what happened to him after the 1880 census.

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By now, I am very curious about why it took so long for someone from Mable's extended family to claim her body. Why she found herself nearly 300 miles from home, alone in Little Rock, AR, without friends and not a penny to her name.

And I want to find her grave.

...And the rockets' red glare,
The bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave?
O'er the land of the free
And the home of the brave...

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Although we all know that the holiday we will celebrate Monday s the 240th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence - a statement declaring that the thirteen American colonies regarded themselves as a new nation - not everyone realizes how the Star Spangled Banner came to be, or that it was not written during the Revolutionary War.

As a matter of fact, Francis Scott Key didn't call it the Star Spangled Banner. His original title was Defence of Fort M'Henry.

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It was during the War of 1812 that the verses that would become our national anthem were written.

Key was an influential lawyer who volunteered to negotiate with the British for the return of some American prisoners captured during the war, and being held on the the flagship of the British fleet on the Chesapeake Bay. He and some friends were permitted to board the ship and were successful in their efforts, but since they had learned of plans of the British fleet to attack Fort McHenry at Baltimore, they were allowed to re-board their own vessel, but under British guard.

It was under this close scrutiny that on the night of 13 September 1814, Key watched anxiously as the British fleet continued to shell Fort McHenry, and the Americans became slower and slower to return fire. At twilight, he could still see the 30 by 42 foot Stars and Stripes (one of two flags made the previous year by a woman named Mary Pickersgill), tattered but still flying over Fort McHenry. The shelling continued throughout the night.

By dawn, an eerie silenced descended. Through the smoke, fog and haze, Key and the other Americans looked for the flag. There was a break in the haze, and they could see it.

Our flag was still there... announcing the American victory.

Mary Pickersgill's original flag is preserved at the Smithsonian Institute.

The memory of our ancestors and other relatives who fought for our independence from England during the Revolutionary War, and then fought for it again during the War of 1812, is preserved in our hearts.

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Revolutionary War
Joshua Bloomer Ashmore, Sr.
Stephen Bloomer Balch
Luke Chapin
Samuel Chapin
Thomas Hale
Jesse George Hoshal
Alexander Meek
James Meek
Samuel Meek
Nelson Edward Parrish
Elijah Rollins
Ichabod Rollins
Nathaniel Rollins
Jesse Williams

The War of 1812
John S T Callaway
John Ivie
Ephraim C Lemley, Sr.
Keys Meek
Abraham Lincoln Parrish
George Wharton
Jacob Wingfield


Lest we forget...