Category: Montgomery Line

Thriller Thursday: Razor Blade Death

Posted on by spuddled

John N. Sweeney, my third cousin four times removed, was born in Illinois around 1866. He was not from my maternal Hoffmann side of the family (many of whom lived and/or still live in Illinois) but instead was from the paternal Sweeney branch which originated near what is now Belfast, Northern Ireland, then emigrated to what became Buckingham County, Virginia, then continued on to Casey County, Kentucky. Some of these Sweeney branches then moved again, this time to Illinois.

John’s parents were John Merritt and Eletha J. (Foley) Sweeney. They married in 1865 in McDonough County, Illinois1, and John N. Sweeney was the first of their ten children. The family was enumerated in Emmet, McDonough County, in 1870 and 18802,3. The 1890 census was almost completely destroyed by fire in 1921, but even if it had not been, the younger John would not have lived long enough to be enumerated.

John, Sr., and Eletha were still living in Emmet in December 1889, but John, Jr., then about 23, was working for a John Williamson three miles northwest of his parents’ home. The younger John had spent Sunday, December 8, with his parents, then in the evening left to return to the Williamson farm. Later reports indicated he stopped on the way to attend a church meeting. When he didn’t appear to work on Monday morning, Mr. Williamson assumed his employee was still visiting his parents. However, on Tuesday, John’s body was found in a field near a water tank by a man working half a mile south of the Williamson farm.

According to newspaper accounts of the incident, John’s throat had been cut from ear to ear; a bloody razor was found near a haystack “some rods distant,” along with his boots and stockings. There was a trail of blood leading from the haystack to the water tank where the body was found. An inquest was held, and the finding of the jury was that John had committed suicide, cutting his throat near the haystack, then stumbling (with his gaping neck wound?) to the area of the water tank, where he died.4, 5

The Inter Ocean, 11 December 1889

Maybe I watch too many true crime shows, but I’m not sure I’m sold on the suicide angle for poor cousin John. This method of suicide is unusual enough, but it seems even less likely that John would be traipsing around barefoot after inflicting the fatal blow. However, I can’t find any evidence that the inquest findings were disputed, in spite of the fact that “He left no reason for the act, nor do the family know any.” While it’s not impossible that the inquest findings were correct, I’m sure that in the 21st century there would be enough questions about the circumstances and details surrounding John’s death to warrant further investigation.

1Illinois, Marriage Index, 1860-1920/1800-1940; Ancestry.com
21870 U.S. Federal Census; Ancestry.com
31880 U.S. Federal Census; Ancestry.com
4The Macomb (Illinois) Journal, 12 December 1889; www.newspapers.com
5The Daily Inter Ocean (Chicago), 11 December 1889; www.newspapers.com

Friday Funny: That Boy is a Girl

Posted on by spuddled

On 24 January 1908, the Sisseton (South Dakota) Weekly Standard carried the following blurb on page 5:

On 13 January 1908, Wellington David Wilson’s (my second great-grandfather) second wife Bessie (Olson) Wilson had given birth in Roberts, South Dakota, to her third child, a daughter named Gladys Leona Wilson. As W. D. noted above, the newspaper the previous week had erroneously referenced a “big 10 pound boy” born to the couple, and he chose to clarify things with humor.

Fourteen years later Gladys was confirmed, and some years later married Odin Alf Olson. The two had at least one child, Gloria Dawn Olson (born 22 July 1930 in Watertown, South Dakota). Gladys passed away in 1965 and her husband in 1968; Gloria married Ralph Brostrom in 1993 and died in 2011 in Fairfax, Virginia.

Branching Out: Fixing My Genealogical Mistakes

Posted on by spuddled

Nearly nine years ago (!) I published a blog post here about my Simmons brick wall. I talked about my great-great-grandmother Mary Ann Belinda Simmons‘s mysterious parentage, how I had discovered from the 1850 census that her unknown father had died and that her mother Rachel had remarried a Charles Clark, but that I was still trying to trace that branch back another generation.

In the intervening years I have broken down that brick wall and branched out further with my Simmons ancestry – but only after realizing how dangerous assumptions can be. Here is the 1850 census record where Belinda Simmons appears:

Simmons, Belinda. 1850 United States Federal Census; Dodson, Highland, Ohio. [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2009.

The 1850 census does not identify the relationships among those in a given household (this question was not asked until the 1880 census), and censuses prior to 1850 list only the name of the head of household, so there wasn’t the option to find infants Belinda and Charles in 1840. What I had to go on was a household of adults and children with differing surnames, and for reasons which I no longer remember, I leapt to the conclusion that Belinda and Charles were the children of a remarried Rachel and her deceased Simmons husband.

Years later I happened to look again at Belinda’s Find a Grave memorial and found that a maternal link had been added – but to an Ann Simmons, not a Rachel Clark. My first inclination was to assume there was a mistake on the Find a Grave site, but I dug a little deeper and found additional records that disproved my earlier assumptions and led to a few new branches on the family tree.

Ann’s headstone, conveniently, lists her explicitly as “Consort of Samuel Simmons,” and shows that she died in April 1839 at the age of 21. I also found a marriage record1 for Charles Clark and Rachel Matthews dated November 29, 1844 in Hamilton County, Ohio. Thus it did seem that the parents of Belinda were Samuel Simmons and his deceased wife Ann, rather than Rachel and her deceased Simmons husband. But then who were Charles and Rachel (Matthews) Clark, in whose house Belinda and her brother Charles were living in 1850?

Ann Simmons Gravestone, Memorial ID 100946394, Find a Grave. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/100946394/ann-simmons.

None of the records I had found for Belinda named her parents, so I turned to Charles Simmons’s records instead. I found a death certificate2 for a Charles H. Simmons, born 26 April 1839 in Ohio who died of apoplexy on 6 September 1908 in Philadelphia. His parents, both born in Ohio, were Samuel R. Simmons and Mary A. Clark. So Mary A(nn) was also a Clark! Then finally I found a 30 July 1837 marriage record3 for a “Samuel B. Simmonds” and “Amil Clark,” further confirming this theory. According to Find a Grave and other sources, there also appears to have been a third Simmons child, Charles’s twin Samuel Benjamin, who was not living with Charles and Rachel in 1850. After this additional detective work, it seems plausible that upon Ann’s death, leaving three children under the age of two, her probable brother Charles and his wife Rachel took in their niece and nephew. I also noted Caleb and Mary Clark (ages 73 and 69) living next door to the family in 1850. It seems likely these could be the parents of Mary Ann and her brother Charles, and the grandparents of Belinda, Charles II, and Samuel.

More questions remain, of course. Various sources show Charles II’s birthdate as 26 April 1839 and Samuel’s as 24 April 1839. This would be strange enough, but especially when their mother’s headstone lists her date of death as 20 April 1839. There is obviously a discrepancy (or two) somewhere! My assumptions this time seem based on better evidence, but I still need further corroboration regarding all these connections. And then, as always in genealogy, the inevitable: can I trace this branch back even farther?

1 Marriage Record of Charles Clark and Rachel Matthews. Ohio, U.S., County Marriage Records, 1774-1993 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2016.
2 Death Certificate of Charles H. Simmons. Pennsylvania, U.S., Death Certificates, 1906-1968 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2014. Original data:Pennsylvania (State). Death certificates, 1906–1968. Series 11.90 (1,905 cartons). Records of the Pennsylvania Department of Health, Record Group 11. Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
3 Marriage Record of Samuel B. Simmonds and Amil Clark. Ohio, U.S., County Marriage Records, 1774-1993 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2016. Original data:Marriage Records. Ohio Marriages. Various Ohio County Courthouses.

Employed by a Cult

Posted on by spuddled

Sometimes you uncover family history facts and immediately comprehend their significance; other times you write down the facts and only later realize how important or interesting they are. I had the latter experience recently when I discovered that my great-granduncle, Joseph Theodore Montgomery, was employed by a cult. But let me take a step back.

Joseph was the sixth son born to John and Mary Ann Belinda (Simmons) Montgomery. He was born 16 July 1872 in Olney, Illinois. His oldest brother was my great-grandfather, Charles William Montgomery. Some time ago I had seen a clipping of his 1945 obituary on Ancestry.com, dutifully saved it to my files and updated my records, but didn’t dig any deeper.

Then I got interested in podcasts. I haven’t started listening to genealogy podcasts yet (though I have a lot of them saved and waiting), so this is an example of two worlds colliding, more or less. Mostly I listen to true crime podcasts (any murderinos out there?), but I also listen to podcasts on other semi-morbid topics, like one called Zealot, by Jo Thornely, which digs into the stories of various cults. As with a lot of podcasts, a major colorful-language warning goes along with this one, and sometimes the impact these groups have had on others are pretty grim.

But in episode 19, the podcast discusses the House of David, a religious movement founded in 1903 in Benton Harbor, Michigan. The group, among other beliefs, promoted communal living, prohibited cutting their hair, and operated numerous business enterprises, including an electricity plant, amusement park, musical groups, a cannery, and a barnstorming baseball team. I shared this story with my brother, who even purchased his own replica House of David cap and jersey. Here he is, modeling the hat last October (along with Ben and Dad):

Matt (in House of David cap), Ben, and Ted Montgomery

So what does this have to do with Joseph Montgomery? I’ve been trying to do some major organizing and overhauling of my genealogy files, thanks in large part to the American Records Certificate from the National Institute for Genealogical Studies I am now pursuing. As part of this overhaul I ran across Joseph’s obituary again, and now the part I’d glossed over before jumped out at me: “Mr. Montgomery…was chief of the refrigeration plant of the House of David cold storage plant…”

Of course, I had to delve into this further. I learned that the House of David had the world’s largest open-air fruit and vegetable market (the Benton Harbor Fruit Market), and the cold storage plant, which was completed in 1937, enabled farmers to store their produce rather than having to sell it right away. So it’s no wonder Joseph’s position as chief of the refrigeration plant got prominent notice in his obituary. Unfortunately, the plant was demolished in the 1990s after it was heavily damaged by fire.

Benton Harbor Fruit Market; cold storage building in the background

This was almost up there with discovering my connection to Lizzie Borden! Unfortunately, it does not appear that Joseph Montgomery had a long crazy beard or played baseball (his funeral was officiated by a Methodist minister), but he was definitely cult-adjacent, and now Matt has even more reason to sport his cool hat.

The Herald Press (Saint Joseph, Michigan), December 1, 1945

Longevity: the Kerrich Family

Posted on by agnette

This week’s #52Ancestors prompt is “Longevity.” I’ve already written about Sophie (Roberg) Wilson, the only great-grandparent still alive when I was born, who lived to the age of 97. So instead, I’ll write about the branch of our tree that has been traced back the farthest: the Kerrich family.

If it weren’t for the original investigations of second cousin David Johnson, I might never have heard of the Kerriches, but he passed along a treasure trove of information that helped me get started on my research in earnest. Part of this treasure trove included many families that originated in Suffolk, along the east coast of England, then eventually moved to the New World and became associated with the Seventh Day Baptist Church. The Kerriches were one of these families.

William Kerrich, my 17G-grandfather, was born in Saxtead, England, in 1418. His son, also named William, was born in Saxtead around 1450, and his son, a third William, was born about 1480, again in Saxtead. Still in Saxtead, this William’s son, Robert, was born about 1505 and died in 1578 in Bedfield, Suffolk. Robert’s son (another William) was born about 1540, in Saxtead once more. Here we finally know the name of a Kerrich wife: Robert’s wife was named Margery.

William and Margery had a daughter, Rose, my 12G-grandmother. This is where the Kerrich name itself ends in my line. Rose’s husband, though, was Thomas Clarke, born in 1570 in another Suffolk village, Westhorpe. Most of Rose and Thomas’s numerous children emigrated to America. Joseph Clarke, our direct ancestor, was born in Westhorpe in 1618.  Joseph’s brother, John, was was part of the group responsible for the founding of Rhode Island and, later, with a group of dissenting leaders, the town of Newport; by 1639, Joseph had been admitted as an inhabitant of Portsmouth, Rhode Island.

Joseph was the only one of the Clarke brothers emigrating to America to leave children. His son Joseph, born in Westerly, Rhode Island in 1643, married Bethiah Hubbard, whose parents, Samuel and Tacy (Cooper) Hubbard, hailed from another Suffolk village, Mendlesham. Joseph and Bethiah’s daughter Judith was born in Newport in 1667, marrying John Maxson when she was twenty. Their daughter Elizabeth, born in Westerly in 1695, my 8G-grandmother, married John Davis in 1715. Here we finally link to a more familiar surname. John and Elizabeth’s 4G-granddaughter, Lucinda Blanche Davis, was the mother of Carl Ozro Wilson, who, in 1907, married Sophie Roberg, whom I would one day meet in her nursing home in Winner, South Dakota.

A few years ago Mom and I went on a pilgrimage of sorts to Suffolk, managing, in spite of the relative remoteness of some of the villages as well as a bus that forgot to drop us off in the correct place, to visit churches in Saxtead, Westhorpe, Mendlesham, and also Finningham, an early residence of the Clarkes. It was a little unreal to visit the churches where our direct ancestors lived so many centuries ago and where, it seems likely, they still rest in peace.

Favorite Photo: Hidden Treasure

Posted on by agnette

This week’s #52Ancestors blog post prompt is “Favorite Photo.” Photographs themselves offer such a perfect glimpse of the past (or sometimes an imperfect and mysterious glimpse) that it is difficult to select favorites. If forced to choose, I would have to say my favorite photo is that of Rita Blanche Wilson, which intrigued me from a very early age, but I’ve already written about that photo here. A close second, though, is an image I had never seen and didn’t know existed until I was 24 years old.

That year, before moving from Idaho to Virginia, I helped my dad and a number of aunts and uncles as we prepared to clean out my grandparents’ house. It was sad to say good-bye to that old house, but I managed to find and save a number of treasures: the old skeleton key from the back door; a piece of white-painted clapboard; the broken pieces of the necklace my grandmother wore on her wedding day; the poster of a boy, his collie, and a train that my dad remembered from his childhood.

But one of the most surprising discoveries came when my dad was removing the washer and dryer from the laundry alcove in the kitchen. There, fallen behind them and unseen for who knows how many years, was a family photograph. It is a beautiful photograph, and remarkably undamaged after all those years behind the washer. Dad handed it to me and confirmed, as I suspected, that the young girl in the back row was, in fact, my grandmother, Blanche Agnes Wilson.

Carl and Sophie Wilson and Family

The Wilson family was not a wealthy one, so there are not a large number of photographs of them. And none of them depict my grandmother at this time period – there are baby photos, and her confirmation photos at age eighteen, but none of this in-between time, which makes this glimpse of Grandma in her pristine white dress and huge hair bow all the more fascinating. What was she thinking here as she looked down at the book her sister was holding? Was the strain already evident in her parents’ marriage? Was there sorrow still over the two brothers she had lost, one the year after she was born, and one perhaps two years before this photo was taken? There is no way now of knowing these things. But the facts that we do know are these….

The photograph was taken at Wilson’s Studio in Albion, Nebraska. Whether or not the studio was owned by a relative of the Wilson family, I do not know. Captured here in the photo are Carl Ozro Wilson, his wife Sophie Christine (Roberg) Wilson, and five of their eventual ten children, including Blanche, their second child. Their eldest, Anders Clarence, had died of “cholera infantum” on his second birthday, when my grandmother was eight months old. The other children in the photo are Ozro Willie, Pearl Jeanette, Clarence Salmer, and Mildred Genevieve. Woodrow Wilson, born between Clarence and Mildred, lived only two days in the summer of 1917, dying of colic.

Baby Mildred was born in April 1919. I would assume this might have been taken toward the end of that year, though I’m not very good at guessing babies’ ages. If correct, that would make Clarence four, Pearl seven, Ozro eight, and Grandma eleven. I can’t help but wonder if, having lost two baby sons, Sophie and Carl made a point of capturing this family image soon after their next baby was born. I wonder, too, if Sophie’s father, Anders Roberg, could have played a part. Stories tell of Anders purchasing the matching dresses for Blanche and her cousin Martha seen in their confirmation photo taken in 1926. Could he have encouraged (or paid for?) this family photograph as well? By 1915 the family had moved from my grandma’s native Nebraska to Wood, South Dakota, some 200 miles from Albion, but Anders lived in Newman Grove, Nebraska, only 15 miles from Wilson’s Studio.

Whatever the reason or the circumstances, I am grateful to have this photo and its window into the life of my grandmother as a young girl. And grateful for the hidden treasure in the laundry room.

Start: High School Sweethearts

Start: High School Sweethearts

Posted on by agnette

Mom and Dad, 1962

So it’s January 2. As usual, I’ve made about 45962 resolutions, one of which is to resurrect this genealogy blog. I’m trying something new this year; I recently came across Amy Johnson Crow’s 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks. Each week has its own prompt, intended to encourage selecting one ancestor or relative to share in some way.

This week’s post? “Start.” There are many ways to interpret that one (the system describes the prompts as “intentionally vague”), but for me, and for all of us, we get our start from our parents. So where did my parents’ shared story start?

For Theodore Richard (Ted) Montgomery and Linda Jo Hoffmann, that start was in the first grade. They were in the same class at Van Buren Elementary in Caldwell, Idaho, though both had been born elsewhere (Mom in Portland, Oregon; Dad in Scottsbluff, Nebraska). Both have very different memories of that first grade class, as well, and not much memory of each other at that time. Mom seems to have a fairly positive memory of the class; for Dad, everything was marred by the fact that during a fire drill on the very first day, he asked the teacher (who shall remain anonymous) if there was a real fire, and she slapped him. I don’t like that teacher much, but she is long since dead. I checked.

Mom and Dad continued through school together, but it wasn’t until they were in high school that they had much contact. If I have my story straight, they got to know each other as more than just vague acquaintances toward the end of their junior year. The following summer, while Mom visited relatives in Illinois, Dad wrote her letters. A lot of them. At some point in here, they had their first date, playing miniature golf. Mom won. It wasn’t until Homecoming of their senior year, however, that they became more serious – Mom was elected Caldwell High School’s Homecoming Queen for 1959, and Dad was her escort and crowned her during the game. At least I think it was during the game; a secondary goal for 2018 is to gather more oral history details from family….

Soon after Homecoming, Mom and Dad began going steady. They dated all through their senior year and graduated in May 1960. Both attended the College of Idaho for one semester that fall (both had scholarships to cover that much college), but they knew already that they wanted to get married and start their lives together and not just “soak up knowledge,” as Mom accused my brother and me of doing when we went on for impractical degrees in English/Classics (Matt), and Medieval Studies (me).

They were engaged in December 1960 (again, I’m waiting for Mom to correct me if I’ve got that wrong). Dad then went to work at The Crookham Company, and Mom took classes at a business school. They were married at Grace Lutheran Church in Caldwell on August 26, 1961, which was also Dad’s father’s 60th birthday. Dad was 19, and Mom was still 18; she would turn 19 in about 6 more weeks. They would wait more than a decade to start a family; my brother was born in December 1971, and I in April 1974. But I still consider that first grade classroom where their shared history first began.

One final postscript: Mom and Dad’s glamorous honeymoon was spent at the 7K Motel in Garden City, a suburb of Boise. Like their marriage, the 7K is still in existence, 56 years later.

 

 

Thriller Thursday – Boy Scout Tragedy

Posted on by agnette

Fifty-five years ago this weekend, what should have been a fun Boy Scout camping trip ended in tragedy for 15-year-old Richard Samuels. Richard was my seventh cousin twice removed, a fellow Wilson descendant, and had already experienced more than his fair share of hard times. He was born 25 July 1945 in Ogden, Utah, to Ariel Clifton and Mahala Verne (McFarland) Samuels. The family moved to San Francisco, and then sometime before 1951 Ariel and Verne were divorced.

In May of 1951 35-year-old Ariel suffered burns from a gasoline explosion in his car, dying a week later. According to Ariel’s obituary, he was survived by five sons and a daughter. Unless not all of the children were Verne’s, by 1958 four of them had also died. In August of that year, 43-year-old Verne died after an “extended illness.” Her obituary states she was survived by only two sons, Richard and Clifton.

Thirteen-year-old Richard was then taken in by his mother’s sister Willa and her husband, Lester Rose. He moved with them back to Ogden, possibly to 3376 Gramercy Avenue, a 4-bedroom home that had been built in 1956. The family was certainly living there by July 1961. The Ogden Standard-Examiner of July 4 that year details what happened to Richard in a front-page article just above one noting that Ernest Hemingway, who had died two days earlier, would be buried in the Ketchum, Idaho, public cemetery.

Richard, a student at Ogden High School and a member of the LDS church, had left Ogden at 4 a.m. on Monday, 3 July, with 10 other Explorer Scouts for a camping trip in the Uinta Mountains near Kamas. The trip was intended to last a week but in the end lasted less than twelve hours. The group camped near Buckeye Lake and half the boys left camp to gather firewood. One hundred yards from camp, they cut down a dead lodgepole pine tree. In falling, the tree knocked a limb loose from another tree, and this limb hit Richard on the head. He was taken to the hospital in Kamas but was pronounced dead on arrival from a fractured skull. Dr. John Kumagai stated Richard was most likely killed instantly when the limb struck him. A forest ranger examining the scene later estimated the tree limb weighed “about 100 pounds.” The other Scouts and their leaders returned home after Richard’s death, and Richard was buried Friday, 7 July, in Ogden City Cemetery.

This was not the end of difficult times for poor Clifton, either. Raised not with his brother Richard but in the household of a different aunt and uncle (his father’s sister and brother-in-law), Clifton was the elder by about six years. Less than a year after Richard’s death, in May 1962, it appeared that things might have turned around for the family, as 22-year-old Clifton married 20-year-old “lovely spring bride” Janet Gibbs. Two years later, though, Clifton’s foster father and uncle died at age 58 of a heart ailment. Then in 1967 Clifton and his “lovely spring bride” were divorced, with “mental cruelty” cited as the cause. Exactly what this meant is anyone’s guess, however, as all but two divorces noted in the newspaper with the Samuels’ noted the same cause.

In February 1973, at 28th and Harrison in Ogden, the car Clifton was driving struck another car broadside. Thankfully no one was seriously injured; the 19-year-old driver of the other car was hospitalized in fair condition, and his 17-year-old passenger was treated and released. Clifton, however, was cited for failure to yield and for driving under the influence. We can hope that things did finally turn around for Clifton following this incident. I found him one more time in the Ogden Standard-Examiner, this time in December 1977, purchasing land along with a second wife Kristine.

Tombstone Tuesday – The Curse of the Chaneys

Posted on by agnette

The Sunday Oregonian, August 8, 1920

Some families seem to have more than their share of tragic deaths. One such family is that of Phineas Benjamin Chaney and his wife, Josephine Welsh. Phineas was my fourth cousin 5 times removed through the Davis line. Phineas was born 8 January 1854 in Illinois, the son of Phineas, Sr., and Mary Jane (Berry) Chaney. Even before Phineas, Jr., was born, his parents had endured their own share of tragedy; of their eleven children, four died before their second birthday.  Another child, Emma, died shortly before she would have turned 22.

At least Phineas, Jr., did live long enough to marry; he and Josephine had a son, Fred Russell Chaney, born in March 1885, apparently in New York. At some point the family moved to Portland, Oregon; there, on 9 April 1895, aged 41, Phineas died of appendicitis. The Sunday Oregonian of 12 April 1895 reports the sad events:

“The funeral of Phineas P. Chaney, who died at the Portland hospital, on April 9, took place yesterday afternoon from his late residence at 1193 East Yamhill, a short distance from the Rosedale station, Mount Tabor railway. There was present a large concourse of the friends of Mr. Chaney. The services were conducted by C. B. Reynolds, of the Secular church. At 2:15, the choir began the services by singing the beautiful song, “Sweet Bye and Bye,” when Mr. Reynolds arose and delivered an eloquent address. The remains were buried at Lone Fir cemetery. Mr. Chaney had lived in his present home about four years, coming from Brooklyn, N.Y. He was 41 years old. He was an accomplished millwright, and constructed most of the gearing and machinery in the docks along the East Side. Only a week ago, he was taken sick, and was removed to the Portland hospital, where it was found, as a last resort, that the vermiform appendix would have to be removed. The operation was performed, but he was too far gone to recover, and inflammation ensued, which terminated his life. He leaves a widow and a little son.”

Phineas’s widow, Josephine, was 35 years old and became a schoolteacher. Later young Fred entered medical school at the University of Oregon. After completing his medical training, he moved to Alaska to practice medicine there. In September 1908, while he and three other men were climbing a mountain near the Valdez glacier, he slipped and fell 200 feet. He was apparently not killed instantly but was taken into Valdez, where he died. He was 23 years old; his body was returned to Portland and buried near his father.

Josephine, having lost both husband and only child, continued to teach. She appears in the 1900, 1910, and 1920 censuses, listed as a schoolteacher. In that final census, her address is listed as 415 Yamhill Street. There, seven months later at the Elton Court Apartments, the family’s final tragedy occurred.  At five o’clock in the morning, perhaps caused by a careless smoker, a fire started in the lobby of the apartment building and spread quickly, up both the elevator shaft and the stairs. Josephine was trapped on the fourth floor and, as firemen attempted to rescue her, fell from a window to the sidewalk below.  She died en route to the hospital. Two other women were killed after jumping from the second and fourth floors. Josephine, aged 60 according to some records, 54 according to the Sunday Oregonian, was buried in what is now known as Portland’s River View Cemetery with her husband and son.

Tombstone Tuesday – A Boy Named Esther

Posted on by agnette

 

Eighty-five years ago today, my third cousin four times removed, William Sweeney, died. Thank goodness for genealogy databases which make it easy to look up that sort of thing.

According to his tombstone, William was born 27 January 1891 in Kentucky, the eldest son of Doctor Franklin Sweeney (his actual name, not a title) and his much younger wife Lucy Ann Watson.  Lucy’s name is also a mysterious – she appears variously in records as Lucy Ann, Lousanna, and Louisiana. Doctor Sweeney (or Doc) had been married previously; he and Sarah Margaret Allen had twelve children before Sarah’s death at 46. He then married Lucy some two years later.

In 1900 the family was enumerated in Casey Creek, Casey County, Kentucky. Doctor F. Sweeney is listed as a farmer born in October 1835, and Louisiana as his wife born in March 1868. They had been married for 9 years, which means at their wedding Doctor Sweeney was 55 and his bride 23.  Here William E. is listed as being born in January 1893, with three younger siblings:  Mary E., born March 1895; Fanny Lee, born June 1896, and Mardie B., born November 1899.

Doc Sweeney died in April 1902. About a year later Lucy married George W. Foster. By the 1910 census George and Lucy, still in Casey (or Casey’s) Creek, appear with three of their own children (Albert T., age 6; Elbert, age 2; and Lily, age 1 8/12), as well as Lucy’s four stepchildren. Here William appears as “Esther” Sweeney, age 18.  Most of the family is still together in 1920; only Mary Sweeney is no longer in the household.  In addition, George and Lucy have been joined by daughter Leonda Foster, age 7.

William would not live to be enumerated in the next census, dying in June 1929. He is buried in Brush Creek Cemetery, Casey County, Kentucky. His death certificate is singularly unhelpful. Stamped “Delayed,” it lists yet a third birthdate, 1 June 1889, and under “Cause of Death,” is stamped “Queried No Reply.” Yet another mystery to investigate…