Mayflower Society Application Process

I have gone through the Mayflower Society Application process and our family has been officially accepted as members.  Our roots traced our family back to Francis Cooke, Stephen Hopkins and Elizabeth Fisher Hopkins who came over on the Mayflower in 1620.

What an exhausting yet rewarding process.  What is exhausting is the detail that the society expects when proving a connection.  This is critical in order to ensure you have the true relationship established.

• Memberships are handled through the individual state societies.  So you will need to choose a state and work with their society to go through the application process.  However, some states no longer have a current society to join, such as Arkansas.  
• One must provide all vital documents for the current 3 generations in your line (birth, marriage and death records).  They require the courthouse documents, not church records.  And if a vital record doesn't exist because a state didn't require them at that time, then they need something in writing from the government agency that the records did not exist at that time.  Also important to note is that they require these records for both husband and wife, even the spouse not in the line to the Mayflower.
• Connecting the generations beyond the current 3 requires birth, marriage and death records; however this is where it gets tricky.  States didn't always require them earlier in the US, parents were rarely listed on these documents, and records were often destroyed in local courthouses.  One must truly be crafty to figure out how to properly establish kinship.
• Census Records earlier than 1880 do not establish the relationship to the head of the household.  Thus, they rarely accept them as documentation.  
• All written Wills and Probate records used in your documentation must include a typed translation.  This sounds easy but some of the older wills were written with such elaborate scripts that they are very hard to read.
• All newspaper obituaries must include a typed translation.  Again, this sounds easy but some copies of newspaper obituaries are extremely blurry.  
• All documents must include sources and any cover pages if using materials from books. 

The rewarding part came from the fact that all of my hard work over the years in tracing my lineage paid off in spades when I had about 95% of my application complete by the time I submitted my documents.  But that is most often very rare.  What was left to do was gather a few vital records since they would not accept church records as the main document to connect the dots.    My family left just enough snippets of clues to let me know there was a connection, and then gave me a trail to satisfy that connection.  It was just up to me to collect the necessary documents which included everything from Vital Records, Probates including Wills and Land Records, Newspaper Obituaries, Church Records, Census Records, Widows Pension Record, Cemetery Records, Cemetery Headstone Photos, and more.

At the end of the day, I didn't realize how much this membership would mean to me until I received an official acceptance.  It is an honorable distinction to know that my family had such strong and admirable ancestors that braved the cold seas to bring us life in this new land.  Just looking at the picture of the Mayflower ship below, I am not sure my stomach could have handled that journey.  I am forever grateful to my family roots.

Searching for my Grandmother's Birth Parents = Updated 12/8/12

“Your mother was adopted.”  What?  That’s what my grandfather told my father on the night of his mother’s passing.  This kind, wonderful woman grew up too ashamed to tell anyone her big secret, not even her 7 children.  It’s heartbreaking and I can’t imagine what was running thru my father’s head at that exact moment when his dad drops the bomb.  Here he is, dealing with the death of his mother Helen at the age of 74 from Breast Cancer, and now he has to process the fact that her parents were not her parents.  Or were they..........

Fast forward 30+ years later, and I’ve decided it’s time to find out exactly where I came from.  It started out as a simple concept.  Let’s do a little family research on my ancestors and see what I can find, maybe even understand who I was named after.  Someone named Ellen.  That’s it, that’s all I wanted to do.  But one day into my initial search, I was hooked.  My great grandfather worked at the Cracker Jack factory in Chicago.  Very cool.  I had ancestors that came over on the Mayflower.  I was related to Liza Minelli.  Wow.  My great-great grandmother had 16 children. Forget it. 

At this point, my search was spiraling out of control and I couldn’t stop.  My sister and her husband called my office the “war room”.  But I wasn’t touching the adoption situation, at least not yet.  That was too daunting a task and I was convinced I wouldn’t find out anything.   So I let it sit at the bottom of the pile, at the bottom of my list of things to do.

About a month later, I decided it was time to peek into the file and see what I could find out about my grandmother’s adoption and birth parents.  Basically, all I remember hearing over the last many years was a story about how her father really wasn’t her father, and the birth mother was a servant named Fanny.  But then there was this little whisper in my family that maybe her adopted Bohemian father Frank really was her birth father after all.  Yet the birth certificate said the father was a German man named Fred.  Where that rumor originated from is still unclear to me, but hopefully one day I could get to the bottom of that issue. 

Fanny, Fred and Frank.  Seriously, could you have given me at least one name that didn’t start with an F? 

To begin, I had 2 documents to help me in my search.  One of my dad’s siblings actually petitioned Cook County and got Helen’s adoption transcript.  In the transcript, it names the birth mother, which led to Helen’s birth certificate.  That’s all I had.

Oh, did I mention that the birth mother lied about her name and address on the birth certificate?  She used a fake name of Kate on the birth record, but was quoted in the adoption record as Fanny.  What I will eventually uncover is that this is one of many lies that I would come across in my search.  She obviously had something to hide and that’s what I needed to understand.  So what else was she lying about?  The birth father listed on the certificate?  Probably.

I initially felt lucky because my grandmother was born in Feb of 1900, and the once-every-10-year census came out in June of 1900.  I thought it would be fairly easy to find a 4-month old baby Helen in the census records of Chicago, but I was wrong.  So where was Helen in the census, and where was she for her first year?  According to the adoption transcript, Frank says that he took Helen home around the age of 1, and eventually adopted her at the age of 11.  I was convinced the birth mother took her home in an attempt to raise her, although it was possible she could be at an orphanage (Frank gave money to a Bohemian Catholic Orphanage in his will). 

My first serious search was to look thru all the Chicago orphanages in the 1900 census.  It is a painstaking process to flip thru many pages trying to drill down to the exact location of each orphanage, but it had to be done.  Yet I came up with nothing.  So then I wrote to the Catholic Archdiocese and spoke to the woman in charge of the archives.  She agreed to research the Bohemian orphanage run by the nuns in the year 1900.  But after waiting 2 months for a response, all she came back with was that the records couldn’t be found for that timeframe. 

Then I went back to the census record, and searched for baby Helen and mother Fanny, or Helen and Kate.  I did this search multiple times with no luck until I decided to do a generic search for 4-month old girls.  That’s when I came across a very interesting entry = Baby Helen, born in Feb, living with mother Annie (no father with them).  When I looked closer at the document, the mother’s name was actually Fannie.  It had been indexed wrong after having missed the first letter of her name.  I was convinced this could be them.  I also notice that they list the place of birth of baby Helen’s father as Hungary (not Germany, which is the nationality of Fred listed on the birth certificate).  Very interesting indeed.  The only hiccup was that it had more lies – the last name of the mother was wrong, the age of the mother was off by 10 years, and she said she was from Hungary, not Bohemia.

Here is the interesting part on this census record.  This woman Fannie lived next door to a policeman in the census.  And why that gave me chills is because Frank (the adopted Bohemian father) was a cop.  So now this story begins to form in my head.  Adopted Father Frank is the real father, and has squirreled mother and daughter away with a co-worker so no one would find them.  I was also convinced that Fred, listed as the father on the birth certificate, was another lie and they were never married.  That is until I found Fanny’s marriage record to Fred 5 years before the birth of Helen.  Ugh, I mean, yeah !!

So now I know that Fanny and Fred were actually husband and wife.  But I never did find them living together in the 1900 census, much less with a baby.  Of course, they got married by the Justice of the Peace in 1895, which means they didn’t marry in the church, which means there isn’t a church record to look at.  When I searched the Chicago City Directory of Addresses for Fred, I found him listed during the 1^st year of their marriage, and then I never found him living in Chicago again.  I searched about 20 years of directories, and only found him twice – in 1894 and 1895.  Now I am back to my theory that he is not the father, and had left Chicago long before baby Helen was born in 1900. 

I’m now months into this search before I finally come across another hit – Fanny living in Yellowstone Wyoming.  She is living as a servant in the house of a military officer in the 1910 census.  The entry does say that she is married and is the mother of 1 child, but she is not living with a husband or a daughter.  At this point, I know that Helen is living with her adopted parents as a 10 year old.  Nonetheless, I found Fanny again, and that’s progress.

Yet I’m running out of ideas and fear I will never figure this out.  But I had one big idea left and that was to search for divorce records since I never did find Fanny and Fred living together in a census.  Not knowing what this meant, I ventured down to the Cook County Archives and sat at the microfilm desk.  (I knew Illinois was broke, but for Pete’s sake, could they get a machine that you didn’t have to crank by hand?  What year is this, 1912?)  So I cranked away for an hour, and I’m getting highly annoyed I might add.  That is, until I hit the jackpot.  Finally.  I found a divorce index – Fanny and Fred, March 1911. 

To quote Harry Carey, HOLY COW.  Now I’m fired up and it’s all I can focus on.  I also realized that the divorce date was 1 month before the official adoption papers were issued for Helen, and the lawyer on the adoption was the same lawyer for the divorce.  That cannot be a coincidence.  Frank, did you pay the bill?  It took 2 weeks of patience, which is not a virtue I possess, but the day finally arrives for me to go back to the courthouse and view the record.  I’m giddy and bouncing in my shoes as I walk the 15+ blocks to the Loop. I can’t imagine what it will tell me, but I’m beyond excited.  What I get is a document folded in 3 parts that hadn’t been opened since 1911.  The original rusty staple holding the pages together was still there. 

The first word I saw was “abandoned”.  According to Fanny’s testimony to the courts, husband Fred abandoned her in 1899 (Helen was born in 1900).  In addition, there is a sister named Anna who testifies to the abandonment.  And finally Frank, the adopted father, testifies that he knew Fanny for the past 10 years, she lived alone, and did laundry for a living.  But the part that still breaks my heart is that Frank tells the court that Fanny would occasionally go to his house to visit her little girl.  Remember when I said I was bouncing with excitement on my way to view the record; well, my walk back home was met with a somber tone, and a few tears. 

My whole perception of my great grandmother changed in an instant and I began to feel a connection that I cannot explain.  Whether I am right or wrong, this is what I think went down.  She came to the US in 1889 to live with her siblings in Chicago, and eventually got married in 1895.  1 year later, her husband left her and never returned.   She was broke, lonely and she got pregnant out of wedlock.  Fanny attempted to raise Helen by herself, but had no money, and lived the life of a servant in someone else’s house, doing someone else’s laundry of all things.  I’m sure bringing an infant into this situation was problematic with her employer.  So she had to give up the baby to a better life, which I’m confident broke her heart.  I truly believe this just based on the fact that she often went to visit her as a child.

Fanny’s sister in the divorce record was my goldmine to their family.  I found sister Anna and 2 other siblings living in Chicago, and I even confirmed their parents’ name and birth location in Bohemia.  However, it was sister Anna’s obituary in 1935 that mentioned her sister Frances.  But now Fanny has a new last name.  Obviously, she remarried and it only took me a couple weeks to piece it all together.  I found Fanny’s 2nd marriage record in Ohio, which took place 2 months after the divorce, and 1 month after the adoption. I found her in the 1920 census with her new husband Clyde and a 6 year old son living in Idaho.  I immediately found her death record in 1942 and subsequently received her death certificate 2 weeks later. 

And yes, there was more lying that I uncovered.  On the marriage certificate to her 2^nd husband Clyde, she used her first married last name as the name of her parents, instead of her real maiden name.  Then she checked the box that said she had never been married before, which probably means she didn’t tell her husband about her past.  She also said she was born in Chicago, even though I have her immigration record  and a picture of the boat she came over on from Bohemia.  But who cares at this point.  She lived in an era where shame was the devil, and god forbid you made a mistake.   Yet that mistake led to a wonderful mother of 7 and grandmother of many, including me.  That is not a mistake in my book.  Fanny just stumbled into an unconventional path to motherhood that other people had a hard time accepting.  The hardest thing for me to reconcile is how it affected my grandmother.  I hope to god she isn’t mad at me for uncovering everything.  I wish she were alive today because I believe she would have felt more comfortable telling others.

So there it is.  9 months of brick walls, all to come tumbling down from a divorce record.

I want to meet Fanny in person, but that can’t happen until I see her in Heaven.  So for now, I’d settle for a picture.  I haven’t been able to come up with that yet.  And I will definitely visit her grave in Twin Falls Idaho.  Hopefully soon.  Maybe one day I will get the guts to reach out to the children of her son who now live in Utah.  But I’m too chicken to do that.  I fear they have no idea that grandma had another life.

As for the birth father, I briefly mentioned that I thought Helen’s adopted father was really the birth father.  I have yet to uncover one single hard fact to substantiate this claim.  My theory is based on whispers, and gut.  Frank knew the birth mother and let her into his house.  I doubt that would happen if he picked up a baby at an orphanage.  Also, Frank and his 2^nd wife were 46 years old & childless when he brought Helen into his home.  I can’t imagine he wanted to be changing diapers and chasing a toddler into his 50’s.  Don’t forget another key fact - Fanny lived next to a cop in the 1900 census.  Ok, that may be a stretch, but it doesn’t shut the door, just helps to keep the theory alive.

In addition, my grandparents grew up as neighbors, which is how they met and eventually married.  Thus, my grandfather knew Helen's "adopted” parents.  Last year I ordered Helen's death certificate, which was filled out by my grandfather.  The birth father was listed as Frank, but birth mother was listed as unknown.  That's a huge clue, because if they were both adopted parents, then he would have listed her too. 

There is one other factor in my gut speaking to Frank as the real father.  In 1972, my journalist father did a taped interview with his parents so he could document their family history.  What a blessing this has been to my research.  But it is haunting to listen to my grandmother speak, especially now that I know the full story.  Keep in mind nobody knew she was adopted during this interview.  So when my father began asking questions, she ran away from the microphone and told him she didn’t want to do it and didn’t know anything.  He eventually coaxed her over, and we get to listen to her speak glowingly about her father Frank.  Yet, when he asks about her mother, she said she doesn’t know anything and changes the subject.  It’s definitive that something is not right, yet she speaks with such reverence to Frank.  So now I ask you, why would she love her adopted father so much, yet avoid speaking about her adopted mother?  See what I mean? 

This past summer, I traced Frank’s roots to a distant cousin in Chicago.  We met in person and are discussing a DNA test.  I’m all for checking that box on my research skills, and adding to the story, even if it’s only in my head.

MAJOR UPDATE = I am beyond excited to confirm that my research was correct all along.  Frank is the father of my grandmother !!  My cousin and I both took a DNA test. We had to wait a few anxious weeks once the test was taken, but it was an amazing moment to see the results come back positive and confirm her as a 3rd cousin.  If you have any doubts in your family about possible lineage, I strongly recommend taking part in a DNA test such as Family Tree DNA.  

Thank God I was born in the 20th Century

I thank god every day for the fact that I was NOT born in the 1800’s (or before).  If there is one thing I can gain from my addiction to genealogy, it’s an appreciation for what I have in this lifetime.

My Top 10 Reasons for Why I am Grateful for being born in the 20^th Century:

1.     Hair Dryers – oh boy would I be ugly without my hair dryer

2.     Air Conditioning – oh boy would I be crabby without air conditioning

3.     Indoor Plumbing – no explanation needed

4.     Planes, Trains and Automobiles – my other addiction is traveling.  I really don’t care where I go as long as I have a vacation in the works.  To think people never left their hometown is very sad to me.

5.     Drive Thru Fast Food – I love it that I never have to get out of my car to buy lunch.

6.     Pants – The outfits that women wore in the 1800’s were ridiculous.  Those poor women in humid Louisiana!

7.     Birth Control – sorry, but I’m not interested in having 16 children over a span of 20 years.  Throw in outhouses for when you feel ill, and I would have run away

8.     The Internet – it’s made searching for my ancestors a breeze

9.     Modern Medicine – How did they handle allergies to ragweed?  Sneeze all day for a month?

10. Equal Rights – again, no explanation needed

Our trip to Ireland....

We just returned from our 1^st ever trip to Ireland.  It was a long time coming as we’ve been planning on going for years, but this year finally was the year.  It was bittersweet, however, since our Irish Dad just passed away this past June.  He knew we had the trip planned and was very excited for us to be going, since he himself never got to travel there.

And, we felt our Dad lending his usual loving, helping hand in things the whole week.  For example…….

My sister missed her connecting flight in London, but by some miracle was able to get rebooked on another flight to Dublin, even though they told her that flight was sold out.  She was only  2 hours late in meeting me in Dublin…..thanks, Dad!

When we checked into the hotel, they had upgraded us to a Jr. Suite.  It was bigger and nicer than the 1^st 4 places I lived in as a young, married person……thanks, Dad!

Her luggage was lost and the airline told her they had no record of it once she connected through Washington, DC.  All her research paperwork for our trip was in her luggage, as well as all her clothes and most importantly, her hair care products!  But, at 2 in the morning, she received a text from the airline saying her luggage had been found and was now at the front desk of our hotel….thanks, Dad!

The weather this past summer in Ireland has been a record year for rain, yet for the 6 days we were there, we only had ½ day of rain……thanks, Dad!

We easily found the church of some of our ancestors, which is still an active Catholic parish.  It was unlocked and when we walked in, there were bottles of holy water at the back of the church, as if they had been filled  and were just waiting for us to walk in and collect 2…….thanks, Dad!

One day, as we sat in our rental car at the side of the road, detoured by road construction and completely lost, a woman named Eva came walking down the road out of nowhere and guided us successfully around the road construction to the next town on our itinerary…..thanks, Dad!

Driving on the interstate in the middle of nowhere there suddenly appeared an unmanned tollbooth.  We dug through our belongings for Euro coins and came up with only $1.80.  Guess what the exact amount of money that was necessary at this tollbooth was?  You guessed it, $1.80.  Thanks, Dad!

A beautiful rainbow at the end of the day, which ended right at the edge of our hotel……thanks, Dad!

The whole country felt friendly and almost familiar to us.  Never once did we feel like strangers or outsiders.  We were welcomed everywhere we went and made several new friends.  I would urge anyone who has the least bit of Irish blood in his or her family tree to visit this country.  And even if you don’t, you should add visiting Ireland to your bucket list.

My sister and I flew from different parts of the U.S. to Ireland separately,  drove our own rental car (remember they drive on the wrong side of the road & on the wrong side of the car.  And, ok, my sister did all the driving!) planned our own itinerary, drank Hennessey, ate some pretty suspicious-looking food, picked hotels in towns we’ve never heard of and did this all on our own.  Some people think we were really brave for doing it this way………..

We’ll write about the differences of being brave today vs. being a brave Irish person way back when, in next month’s blog.   There’s NO comparison!

The Scary Side of Your Family Tree

For those of you that don’t quite share my addiction to family research, let me assure you that the emotional roller coaster ride I have been on in my quest to figure out where I came from has been amazing.  Yes, finding out my ancestors came over on the Mayflower is remarkable.  Or how about the fact that my ggg Grandfather was a Doctor that served in the Civil War.  I barely paid attention in history class and now I find myself to have an interest in Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War.  My dad would be so proud.

And if I go really far back in the family tree, I am actually related to Adam and Eve.  Yep, it’s true.

 

However, I say roller coaster because not every story is the happy awe-inspiring fairytale that you expect to get along the way.  Behind my fascination with genealogy are life-realities that can be a little frightening to face, much less talk about.  And I guarantee there is a story in your tree as well.

Imagine my fear when a cousin pointed out to me that in the 1880 census, my gg Irish Grandmother Ellen was listed as living at an Insane Retreat.  I think I stared at that one for several days, not fully understanding the word retreat.  Sounded like she was spending a day at the spa, but I’m pretty sure the word insane wasn’t going to lead to anything good.

My heart bleeds for her as I write this because nothing I uncovered was good news.  Of course, my obsession made me keep searching until I unearthed the full story.  That’s the least I could do for her. Give her life some dignity, and give me an understanding for what she endured. 

Is it fair to say that having 12 children could make you crazy?  I would say a big fat yes, considering I never attempted to have even 1.  Well, Ellen was a typical Irish Wife living with a typical Irish Husband following the traditions of the Catholic Church in Connecticut in the mid 1800’s.  Women must be subservient to their husbands, have sex for procreation only, and endure the racial stigma of being Irish in the US during that time.  Ellen was also very fertile, and had at least 12 children in a span of 20 years (from 1853 – 1873).  I believe there was also a 13^th child born in the 1850’s that died without a trace.  In fact, her first 3 children (probably 4) died within 5 years of each other, and before the 1860 census was even taken.  By 1871, she had lost another daughter, and was pregnant again in 1873 at the age of approximately 44.  I’m exhausted for her.

I never did find Ellen again in any census record after 1880, yet she lived until 1916.  Oh god, where was she for 30+ years?  With the help of a knowledgeable genealogist from Connecticut, I found her 1880 record at the Connecticut Valley Hospital.  It didn’t tell me much other than confirming which hospital she went to.

Being pulled by the serious weight of curiosity for her life, I made a trip to the area in my search to find Ellen’s parents and siblings.  Instead, what I found were her probate records ordering her into the hospital in 1873 (the year of her last child’s birth).  That’s not what I came to find out, but it was the direction I was meant to go.  So I got in my car and drove down to the hospital, which still exists today. 

To say this hospital is a creepy place is being nice.  It sits atop a bluff, overlooking a river, with beautiful views.  There are a series of red brick buildings that clearly were built over 130 years ago.  And because of some upcoming renovations, many of the older buildings sit empty, abandoned and decrepit, broken windows and all.  

As creepy looking from the outside as this hospital was, the current administration was kind enough to humor me and dig into the archives for any records of Ellen’s visit in 1880.  I can honestly tell you that of all the “aha” moments I’ve had in my family research, I would have been fine without this one coming true.  

The medical records that showed up in my mailbox consisted of 13 years of doctor’s notes.  Amazing when you consider this was from 1873 thru 1886.  The records show that Ellen suffered from melancholy with a diagnosis that it was from having too many children.  I often wonder if maybe she didn’t want to have sex any more for fear of getting pregnant with #14.  So she used this as an excuse to get away?  That’s a dumb thought, but it would be very creative of her if true.

So what do I do now with this new-found information?  I use it to keep the fire under my feet to further my research into her lineage.  I still need to find her parents.  They are missing and buried in CT somewhere. I also need to find out where exactly in Ireland she was born.  Hopefully one day I can unlock her past.   

In conclusion, I am a passionate believer that Everyone needs to understand their roots so they can pass this knowledge onto their living descendants, warts and all.  We all have ancestors in our tree with a scary story that may include criminal behavior, divorce, abandonment, mental health issues, or worse.   But don’t turn your back on their lives, understand them and celebrate the fact that they gave you life.  We need to enjoy the fascination of discovering where we came from.  Bumpy ride and all.

The Importance of Researching Siblings

His name was Valentine, and he was the younger brother of my great-great grandmother Eliza.  Well, happy Valentine’s day to me because his death solved one of the weirdest mysteries in our family tree and ultimately found a missing loved one.  Ok, so it took me 2 years to figure it out, but my gut knew it all along, I was just slow in following thru. 

Let’s back up.  My gg grandfather Henry was born in the small town of Grombach, Baden, Germany in 1841.  I am fascinated by Henry.  He immigrated with his entire family and has been fairly easy to trace. I have a picture of him and will say he looks like a cocky, I mean confident, gg grandpa.  I guess you had to be confident when you are the type of person that would travel by wagon to the state of Nebraska in 1875, without a home, set up camp in a cave, and eventually become a wealthy farmer with hundreds of land acres at the time of his death in 1919.

But Henry had 2 wives.  It wasn’t until I uncovered a tattered letter from 1942, packed away in a box at my mother’s house, that I discovered my gg grandmother Eliza was actually Henry’s first wife who died at the young age of 24 in 1872.  My line wasn’t 2^nd wife Margaret after all.  First wife Eliza was the mother of my great grandfather Fred.  In the letter, it told us where she was buried, along with a baby daughter that nobody knew about.   I reached out to the cemetery caretaker and he helped me locate the headstone, which my sister visited and photographed last year.

It turns out the cemetery is in this dinkly little Illinois town of maybe 400 people today, so probably 20 people 142 years ago.  Mystery solved, sort of.  I had Eliza down, now I began work on her mother Martha.  Crap, instant brick wall.

For almost 2 years, I searched for GGG Grandma Martha.  She was born in Missouri and lived most of her life there until I found her living as a widow with Eliza and Henry in the 1870 census, near the town of Eliza’s burial location in Illinois.  But I never found Martha again - ever.  I searched the 1880 census so many times it was almost ridiculous.  No death record on file at the archives dept for the state of Illinois.  I assumed she went back to the state of Missouri and where her 2 sons were living, but nothing.  So I started chasing everything I could think of including her son Valentine and another son George.  I also searched for their children, their children’s children, etc.  I chased what I think (but I’m not sure) are a few brothers, a probable father, and a couple sisters, but no luck.   I even called the caretaker of the Illinois cemetery back to ask if he had a record of Martha’s burial.  Nope.

Eventually, I obtained the death certificate for Martha’s youngest son Valentine in 1918.  Here’s where it gets weird.  Valentine died 47 years later in the same dinky little Illinois town that his sister is buried at, even though he lived all of his life in Missouri.  His death certificate said he had only been in town for 3 days, a coroner’s inquest was performed, and they could not determine cause of death.  

What’s that about?   I will secretly admit I feared maybe he suffered from dementia, went to the grave of his sister and took his life.  But I desperately hoped that maybe his mother Martha was actually buried there after all, and he was there to pay his respects. 

Here’s another fun fact - Valentine died on my birthday.  Maybe the universe was sending me a sign?   Keep digging, Ellen.

It finally dawned on me that even though Valentine wasn’t from this dinky town where he died, the suspicious nature of his death might lead to a newspaper article about the circumstances.

Ding Ding.   His death made 2 newspapers in the area.  It turns out he really was visiting his mother’s grave.  While trying to fix her broken headstone, he had what was most likely a stroke and fell over onto a pile of rocks.  His body wasn’t found for 24 hours. 

I’m sorry Uncle Valentine, but I will be forever grateful to your stroke.  Hallelujah, GGG Grandma Martha has been found.  Now if I could only figure out where Martha’s parents are.  The hunt truly never ends.

Don't be afraid of the cemetery.......

Have you ever just walked around a cemetery?  If not, you should!  And, no, we are not ghost busters, devil worshipers or into being scared silly. 

Here’s the thing; it will be what you make it.  For us, it’s almost always a peaceful, thought-provoking, spiritual, educational and beautiful place to wander about. 

Every year around my birthday, I go visit a friend who passed away shortly before his 40^th birthday. I’m now well over 40.   Cemeteries also provide perspective…..lots and lots of perspective!  Suddenly, things like your slow internet connection or a long line at the grocery store seem relatively unimportant. 

The real estate for almost every cemetery we have been to, is usually the best in town, with the best views to boot.  Your relatives’ final resting place may have expansive ocean views and sweeping mountain views, or  even 360° city views. 

You can wander about and see actual pictures of the deceased (thank goodness for modern conveniences, i.e. hair dryers, curling irons, lip waxing, etc.), very interesting names, entry gates with incredibly ornate detail, decades- old magnificent shade trees, and sometimes, if you are lucky, you may even learn a little something from a headstone.  At one particular cemetery, we even saw a bullet hole shot straight into the face of the deceased, the picture of which was on the headstone.  What the heck is the story behind that?!

If you haven’t visited your relatives’ final resting place, get going!  Of course, it’s understandable if this is a hard thing emotionally for you to do, but it doesn’t have to be a sad, morose place to visit.  You can make your visit a happy and spiritual trip, believe it or not! Mother Nature is really the only thing that should keep you from visiting.

Where is  the most beautiful cemetery you have ever visited?  Share with us your stories.  And, a special shout out to anyone who can identify the cemetery in the picture at the top of this blog………

Ancestry Sisters