I’ve always thought of both sides of my family as essentially midwesterners who migrated to the “Intermountain West” in the 1940s, leaving the remainder of their families (and my ancestors) behind. Today’s post, my inaugural “Document Detail” entry, takes a closer look at how things are not always as they seem.
My maternal grandparents, Joseph Benjamin and Velma Marie (Swing) Hoffmann were both certainly midwesterners. Grandpa was born in Fairbury, Illinois, and Grandma in Francesville, Indiana. They married in Peoria, Illinois, in 1938, and moved to Idaho in 1940. Though Grandma’s parents later moved to Texas, the fact that their move took place after Grandma and Grandpa’s made it seem that Grandma and Grandpa were the trailblazers, the first to really leave their midwestern roots.
On Grandpa’s side, his parents and three of his grandparents are all buried in Fairbury. One outlier, his paternal grandmother, is buried in Cissna Park, Illinois. Again, all in line with my familial identity. My maternal relatives emigrated from France, Germany, or Switzerland, wound up in the midwest, and stayed until Grandma and Grandpa set off for the west so Grandpa could hunt and fish. At least that is the lore.
But if we backtrack, we find a different story. Grandpa’s mother, Emma Alice Slagel, as I’ve said, died and is buried in Fairbury. She was born there as well. Her mother, Mary Demler, was born in Baden, Germany, married Samuel Slagel in Fairbury in 1875, and was buried in Fairbury in 1928. Samuel Slagel was born in Wisconsin in 1849 (or possibly Iowa; sources differ), eventually moving to Fairbury before marrying Mary. His parents, Samuel John and Mary (Walty) Slegel, were born in Bern, Switzerland (Samuel between 1815-1816, and Mary between 1819-1820).1 Their first child was born in France, but the remaining 11 were born in the midwestern U.S. Mary died in Iowa, though I have yet to determine exactly when.
But Samuel John? He died in…Oregon. And his was not a mid-twentieth-century move. He was living in Dairy Creek, Washington County, Oregon, by 1880, as he was enumerated there with his married son John.2 In the 1887 Washington Territorial census, he was living in Klickitat (now part of Washington State, and about 120 miles east of Washington County, Oregon).3 I haven’t found him in the 1900 census yet, which at first led me to believe he died before 1900. But Ancestry.com’s Oregon Death Index provided a death date for him of 3 February 1905,4 and when I emailed the Oregon State Archives, they responded quickly with a copy of Samuel’s death certificate.
Since the entire premise of this theme is to focus on one document in detail, I’ll do that now (finally). Right off the top (literally), what stands out is that he passed away in the “Insane Asylum” in Salem, Oregon. A quick stroll through Wikipedia tells me that what is now called the Oregon State Hospital was founded in 1862, but the current building was constructed in 1883.5
The next thing that jumps out from Samuel’s death certificate is his name. Here he is listed as “John Schlegel, Sr.” He might, in fact, take the prize for the highest number of name variations in the numerous records in which he appears. In the “Alternate Name” field in my database, he shows up as: John Schlagle, John Schlagel, John Schlegal, John Slagle, Samuel John Slegel, John Schlegle, John Slagel, John Schlegel, and John Samuel Slegel.
Whatever his name was, he is listed as 88 years old at his death, and a widower born in Switzerland who had worked as a farmer. All of that seems pretty accurate, though I do wish someone had entered an actual birthdate for him! And next we get his date of death. Interestingly, it seems that the Oregon Death Index was inaccurate, and that he died on 13 February 1905 rather than 3 February. The doctor who signed the death certificate, W. D. McNary, notes that he had attended John from 31 January – 13 February, last saw him alive on the 13th, and that John died that day at 1 p.m.
Dr. McNary gave “senile exhaustion” as Samuel John’s cause of death. This vague term describes fatigue in older adults that could be caused by any number of factors so isn’t terribly helpful. What is interesting is that Samuel’s death certificate notes that he was only at the asylum for 14 days before his death, and before that his “former or usual residence” was Banks, Oregon (which is in Washington County). So his was not a long extended stay at the asylum. Which makes me wonder what happened to necessitate taking him there on 31 January. Then the final piece of information gleaned from the document is his place of death: the Asylum Cemetery. Samuel John would not have been buried here for long; after a vote by the Oregon Legislature in 1913, all the remains in this cemetery were disinterred and cremated, some being claimed by relatives and reinterred to location designated by the family members. I’m not sure if Samuel was one of these, or where his remains are now.6 But in spite of my preconceived notions, at least three of Samuel’s children would also live and die in Oregon. It’s just that my direct ancestor wasn’t one of these three, and it took another two generations for my branch to make the journey west.
A completely unrelated postscript: in doing a quick search for the Dr. W. D. McNary who treated Samuel John, I discovered that he had been born at Klickitat, Washington, but moved to Salem, Oregon, where he served on the state hospital staff. He died in 1943. But his son, Wilson Davis McNary, Jr., died in 1941 in San Mateo, California, shot to death by someone who accused him of “stealing his girl.”7 There are a whole slew of newspaper articles about that, but that’s too much of a digression even for me.
- 1850 Census (n.p: www.ancestry.com, n.d). ↩︎
- FamilyHistory Search and/or www.ancestry.com, 1880 Census. ↩︎
- Washington State Archives, “Washington, U.S., State and Territorial Censuses, 1857-1892,” censuses, Ancestry.com (https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/1018/ : accessed 25 March 2025), John Schlagel. ↩︎
- Ancestry, Oregon Death Index, 1903-1998. ↩︎
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_State_Hospital ↩︎
- https://www.findagrave.com/cemetery/2626933/asylum-cemetery ↩︎
- https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/108775348/wilson_davis-mcnary ↩︎