Shakin' the Family Tree

My sister and I were talking last weekend about when we wanted to get together.

We each had a few chores to get done before we could kick back, and one we had in common was the laundry. She mentioned she liked to get hers done early in the summer, so the clothes dryer didn't heat up the house.

I mused about that as I started my own laundry.

About a time when doing the laundry was truly a chore.

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All photos below from the Library of Congress.


Happy Laundry Girls, 1891


1900, location unknown


1918-1920


New Orleans courtyard, 1920-26


61st Street, NYC, summer of 1938


laundry room of a model home in Greendale, WI, March 1937

The last couple of weeks have been trying.

At work I am working on a very sad case involving abuse and neglect of children with developmental disabilities in a psychiatric hospital.

And then coming home to consecutive nights of sitting in the cottage, listening to the wail of tornado sirens, one of which is only several hundred yards from my front door.

Morning drives the horror home.

Such devastation. You simply cannot appreciate the totality of the devastation from the media photographs.

In order to fully grasp it, you have to stop the car. Get out, and smell the pungent pine scent combined with gasoline fumes coming from the chain saws that assails you as you pick your way around toppled trees so huge that you and your best friend couldn't wrap your arms around no matter how hard you tried.

You have to stand at the bottom of the ladder and hand one tarp after another up so the next door neighbor can help nail them down over the gaping holes in the roof.

The ones with a roof - even part of one - are the lucky ones.

You have to rock silently as a young woman you just met at Backyard Burger sobs on your shoulder because she doesn't know how long it will be before she can get back to see what's left of her home. If there's anything left at all.

Some of them want to talk. Some of them can't yet.

You need to put some money in the jar at the corner store to help pay for the baby's funeral.

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So I've been preoccupied and not paying attention to the ancestors lately.

And they are letting me know they want some attention.

I haven't seen anyone else blog about that. Maybe you have, and I just haven't read *that* entry.

Don't panic. I only see dead people in my dreams.

But there are things that happen here at the cottage that I have come to accept as normal, and they always have to do with researching my ancestral lines and finding answers.

I have a haunted computer printer, coffee maker and bathroom light switch. All three operate independently of me.

Not all the time. Only when I have been working very hard on an ancestral line, or need to.

I'm a very linear thinker, so when these things started happening, I naturally looked for rational answers.

I taped the bathroom light switch in the off position. I'm on the third coffee maker, plugged into a different outlet.

My cousin heard the printer start working all by itself when she was visiting, and left shortly afterward. (I had told her about it, and although she was very polite when I did, I knew she was skeptical. But seeing and hearing is believing.)

And today, all three of them did their stuff.

So I guess I should get back to work, huh?

Wonder who I'll see in a dream tonight...

The journey is good.

The past week was a really good one for wrapping up loose ends on some of the ancestors, and getting a foothold on a couple more who have stubbornly refused to give up much detail at all in their sporadic paper trails.

In addition, I've found tantalizing little bits on a couple of people in other family trees I manage.

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These are trees for some very special friends of mine, who having listened to me talk about discoveries in my family tree, have begun to reminisce about stories that came through their own families.

Usually, all it takes is for one of them to wonder aloud, I wonder if there was any truth to that... and I am ready to explain about how to start looking. These three didn't have the resources to start looking. They love the idea of having their trees online, and help me research by asking their families THOSE questions...did anyone ever mention so-and-so?

Because I'm just saying...I'll get as involved in your family history as you are.

So I have four family trees on Rootsweb that have no relationship to mine at all. Three of them are the aforementioned friends - one having a great-grandfather served with the US Colored Troops in the Civil War. Turns out his g-granddad had the same name as another man, almost exactly his age. Both men, named Orange Martin, had been slaves in Arkansas, and fought for their freedom.

It was so ironic to realize when I ripped open the envelope from NARA with Orange Martin's Civil War service record that I had the wrong one. Almost identical dates of birth, but served in different units, etc. And both lived in Arkansas.

It seemed like there was absolutely no one at all looking for the man I began to call The Other Orange Martin.

So I created that fourth tree. It has eight people in it - all of whom were identified in his military file. I keep hoping someone finds it and runs with it...and I hope they email me to say they want his records...

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It may sound hokey, but when Todd Fox was preparing Nathaniel and Levi Callaway's gravesites to install their stones, and told me I could have the tops of the numbered concrete columns he took out to lay the markers...

Well...

I jumped on it.

Each was one was about 3 feet into the ground with the numbered top protruding about six inches. Nathaniel's was 102 and Levi's was 140.

Folks, that was a 125 year old concrete marker that was installed on the grave in 1886.



Right now they are on the front porch. I don't know if they will come inside (for protection from the weather in their 126th year) or stay outside.

I do know they are very heavy.

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I hope I'm closing in on Margaret Ann Tipps (who married John Dillehay, then John Coffman and finally John Lockhead). If so, I'll probably be posting the saga of a woman who soldiered on against some pretty tough odds. They called her Molly.

Sounds like one of her kids kinda acted up, too. Wonder what it was like to deal with a teenager in the 1880's? At least you didn't have to worry about them wrecking the car.

And yeah, I'm wondering what was up with all Molly's Johns...

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I've had my windows open for 4 days now. It has been very mild, and very humid.

And it's kind of weird to go out to my table on the porch with my laptop and not even need a sweater this time of year. But this is the south.

So I just cracked up when I finally figured something out.

I figured out why I had not been able to find the cemetery where Molly Tipps was buried. Everyone remembered being told she was buried in Blues Chapel Cemetery in White County.

Except there was no such cemetery, and I couldn't find anything that said in the olden days we called it that.

I went back and took a look at the 1930 census, when Molly was living with her son and his family in Grubbs, Jackson County, AR.

That's *real* close to White County. Molly died in 1937.

And guess what?

There's a Ballews Chapel Cemetery in Grubbs, right behind the Ballews Chapel Southern Baptist Church.

Bingo.

I love it when our Southern accents get in our way.

'Cause you can usually get around that.

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The journey is good.

I love it when little details come together. They start to knit together that third dimension of my ancestors and other family members.

See, that third dimension is important to me.

Genealogy purists would say that I am not a genealogist. There's much more to my family tree than just who married and begat whom, and what year they did that, in what location, and which piece of paper I have to back that up.

Check.

But dead people don't have to be - and were not in life - two dimensional.

Flat, ya know.

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A very neat thing happened this morning.

I slept until I woke up (I love those days), and then I got coffee, a cigarette, fed the cats, and fired up the laptop.

I had the coolest email from my cousin. (I know, I am dating myself by saying something was cool, but go with it, okay...)

She scanned a bunch of the things her mother had given her related to our family history, in particular, our grandfather, George W Burris, and sent them to me.

They are *way* cool, and help to flesh out our (respective) third dimension of our grandfather.

Both of us knew Granddaddy when he was still living, and each of us has detailed remembrances of him. And naturally, both of us are pumping our own parents for their remembrances of their father.

And so we are seeing the evidence of the stories that Granddaddy was a licensed school teacher, and a licensed attorney in Pope County.

He was.

He was licensed to teach for 1912-1913.


He got his license to practice law in 1917.


I don't think he ever used either one to make his living.

But still.

I had always heard that, but only that he was licensed to practice law. Not about the teaching.

Our grandfather evidently placed a high degree of emphasis in acquiring knowledge.

Maybe he viewed both of these licenses as opening the door to other possible careers if necessary.

Maybe not. Maybe he just liked learning and wanted to see if he could get the licenses. I know people like that.

Whatever the case, he valued education. According to one of his daughters, the reason he decided to live in Arkadelphia when he returned from Panama was education.

He hoped to marry and raise a family. If they lived in Arkadelphia, his children would have easy access to either of two colleges in the town, Henderson State College, and Ouachita Baptist.

So Granddaddy was also very much a big picture guy...

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Part of my delight in receiving the email from my cousin was a two page letter to Granddaddy from Lee, written in 1950, and talking about their time they worked together at the Post Office in Russellville. In 1910.

Lee was writing the letter to help Granddaddy gather information to complete an application for retirement from the United States Postal Service.

Granddaddy was trying to get credit for the time he worked at the Post Office before it became a civil service job. Lee was supplying him with an affidavit, saying he worked with George also in 1910 at the Russellville Post Office.

Page 2 of the letter...


So I am sitting here, at my grandma's table, thoughtfully sipping coffee, and thinking about Lee.

Who has to be Lee Jones.

Who appears in at least two of my family photographs, one at the Russellville Post Office, and one family photo of a bunch of Burris men at the G W Burris, Sr home in Russellville about 1915.

Lee's the guy to the far left, wearing the dark suit.


So Lee must have been important to my family. He had a connection with Granddaddy that lasted at least 40 years.

Kinda like part of the family.

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Yep.

Just like family.

Robert Lee Jones was Granddaddy's first cousin.

Lee's mother was Margaret Jane Burris, sister of George Washington Burris, Sr. Margaret married Cass Jones on 20 Dec 1874 in Pope County. Robert Lee Jones was born 29 Jan 1889 in Appleton, a little community in Pope County. (He must have preferred his middle name - I've never heard him referred to as anything other than Lee.)

Lee died in Sebastian County on 28 Jul 1957, seven years after he wrote his 1950 letter to Granddaddy. He is buried in Forest Park Cemetery in Fort Smith, AR.

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Now I have to try and figure out if he married and had kids. If there are descendants, they may want some photos.

And they may have some, too...

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The journey is good.

I put on my apron a while ago to wash dishes and deal with other sloppy stuff. It took me back.

To a time I vividly remember, when both of my grandmothers, and the one great-grandmother who was living, just automatically tied their aprons on when they entered the kitchen.

When did we quit doing that - when wash and wear came out and women were no longer slaves to a day (or more) of ironing for a large family?

I liked their aprons better than mine.

They were softer.

And they had rick-rack.

I want rick-rack.

Today has been a low-key day for me, by design.

In good news, I am fairly flying along on tracking a friend's ancestors, quite an interesting mix of Serbians (who were Serbian Orthodox in terms of religion) and German Catholics. Most seemed to have immigrated to the United States between 1847 and 1870, with the Vuletics arriving around the turn of the 20th century. Most of them were steel workers who lived in Cambria County, PA. Fabian Kessler and some of his sons were stone masons.

As I have noted with historic documentation on recent immigrants in my own and other family trees I maintain, they left good tracks. Often when I look at the political climate in the places they came from at the time of their departure, I wonder if they were used to being asked by the government for papers, please...

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The day has not been without its challenges.

In the last six months or so, my internet service provider - Comcast - has not been providing me with the high speed internet access 24/7 for which I am paying. I mean, if I am going to invest a sum of money equivalent to two of my utility bills each month for lightning speed internet, I'm gonna have it.

Any. time. I. want.

Period.

It took about an hour and a half to get that handled. The email I sent last night when webpages timed out before they loaded paved the way.

Now, we have to decide how much they owe me for all my lag- and down- time...

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I had forgotten I'd ordered the Goodspeed's for middle Tennessee on CD.

That was in the mailbox after the Comcast tech left.

I've briefly scanned it, and am ever so (slightly) disappointed that few of my direct forbears made the "who's who" list in 1886. Truth be told, I would not be a bit surprised if William Burris had left owing Lawrence County a sum for back taxes.

I guess he got on the right list.

However, there is excellent background on Lawrence County (and others) that will be useful in putting context to some of the ancestors' actions.

So it's all good.

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Had a few minutes of concern about the laptop earlier. Acting strange and then wouldn't shut down to re-boot, so I had to turn it off.

All those files...

It was reassuring to have the DVDs of the complete back-up I did on 23 December sitting on the desk.

And didn't need them...

Isn't that the way it always is? You go looking for one thing, and find another instead?

I went to see my folks yesterday. While I was there, we were talking about how it can sometimes be difficult to separate family lore from family history.

My step-mom mentioned that her family had disagreed on the occupation of one of her great grand uncles, George Washington Hayslip. Some said he had owned a cannery in Adams Co., OH. I told her I would do some digging around and look through some of the historic newspaper databases to see if I could find advertising for a cannery there.

Imagine my surprise when my search for Hayslip in Adams Co., OH brought up several articles like this one, which ran in the 10 Aug 1897 edition of the Maysville KY, Evening Bulletin:



So now, I am on a quest to see how that ended. Found another article in the 18 Oct 1897 Marietta (GA) Democrat that said the trial had been postponed to the January 1898 session of the court.

John Hayslip was George Washington Hayslip's brother.

And as far as I can tell, George was a farmer until he died in 1924.

ETA: I have now found an article that says the victim's name was Mac E Gordley. Source: 11 Aug 1897 edition of the Elkhart Weekly Review.

There are a whole bunch of little rural towns in Arkansas.

Funeral processions in those places are not often accompanied by police escorts on motorcycles, zipping to the intersection in advance to allow the procession to cross unimpeded.

They aren't needed. Everyone gives way to a funeral procession, pulling as far off the road as necessary to allow all the cars to pass. We even do that in the "big" cities - at least, most of us do. The ones of us who can remember our manners.

Maybe that's just a Southern thing. I don't know.

What I do know is that I was taught from the time I was a little bitty girl that when someone takes that last ride, you show respect.

About this time last year, I had a pleasant exchange of family information with another Chapin researcher on a Chapin surname internet message board.

I woke one December morning to an email announcing a reply to the thread. When I looked at it, it was from someone from the Chapin Family Association, telling me to give her the info I had on "this line," and giving me her email address. She's updating the Chapin books.

The Chapin books, just like the books on any other surname, are produced by the various "family associations" for sale. The various "family associations" are membership associations, with monetary dues required for membership

The family associations haunt threads on surname message boards to find family members to hand over - for free - information the family associations then sell to other members of the family.

I have a problem with that.

I didn't email the Chapin Family Association chick. I did respond to her though - to tell her she could probably find my info on "this line" by searching Rootsweb.

Where I publish my info for anyone to search for free. But I expect them to do their own searches.

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One of my Callaway cousins has a very wry sense of humor. And his own perspective on historical associations.

On the trip to Memphis last weekend, we had some time to talk. He knows one of our other cousins has been pestering me to join the County Historical Association, of which she is an officer. I have a couple of problems with that, not the least of which is that the monthly meetings are on a weekday for a luncheon about 70 miles from me.

You're not going to join that hysterical society, are you?

You mean "historical" society, don't you?

Well no...I really mean hysterical society. You can call it anything you want.

Every once in a while, I run across interesting little details in the family tree that probably go unnoticed by everyone but me.

Take the family of Allen Dee Toomey and Alice Hucks.

They married on 1 Oct 1899, in Monroe County, TN. Throughout the first 20 years of their married life, they lived in Monroe County. Then, they moved off to Summit Co., OH, and that's where I found them in the 1930 census.

With their children, Gertrude, Gaspard, Gladys and Grant.

I looked at that and blinked. Wondered whether it was Allen or Alice who was such a fan of alliteration.

And muttered under my breath as I entered data for Gaspard into the software...

Your mama must have had a really hard labor with you son...I'm so sorry...