Ahnentafel

I’ve come to the conclusion that I am not writing as many posts as I ought to! Since my goal here is to keep everyone up to speed on all my genealogy and family history discoveries, I plan to write more often about my research progress even if I haven’t received any earth-shattering revelations. So what am I up to now? My major addiction is my current “Census Project”–using the census images at www.ancestry.com to trace all our family branches from 1850 (the first year that every individual in a household was listed by name) to 1930 (the most recent census available). I am working my way very slowly through the Davises right now, many of them located in Doddridge County, West Virginia. My target family today was Anderson G. Davis and his wife Millie (or Mollie) Dotson. All the West Virginia research is made easier by the fact that one of the Ancestry.com databases contains information on West Virginia marriages prior to 1900–this really simplifies the process of tracing an individual from their childhood home to their own home and family after marriage. This particular branch of the Davis family also contains quite a few unusual names–among the siblings of Anderson Davis were Zacharias, Elvira, Donmanuel, Elijah, Elkana, Sylvanus, Penelope, and Vandelee. All the unusual names help with the tracking process–especially with a common surname like Davis. Sometimes I wonder if I will ever see the end of the Census Project–and then I realize I don’t really want to!

In the summer of 2005, Mom and I took a trip to Michigan. I had never been there before, and we wanted to check out the many lighthouses on the Great Lakes. One of our favorite stops was the Little Sable Light, situated on an isolated sandy beach near Mears. The lighthouse is made of reddish brick and stands 107 feet tall on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan. As always, I was interested both in the light itself and in imagining what life for the lighthouse keepers was like, but had no reason to suspect I would one day find a personal connection.

Several years later, researching census records of our Wilson ancestors, I made an unexpected discovery. Hiram James Willson, born in Massena, New York, between 1836 and 1837, was the first cousin twice removed of Carl Ozro Wilson. Sometime between 1850 and 1867 Hiram moved from New York to Michigan, as did a number of Willson relatives. In the 1850 census Hiram can still be found in Louisville, New York, but in 1867 his daughter Gertrude was born in Michigan.

By 1900 Hiram had died, and Gertrude was not found in the census record of her widowed mother, Jennie (Vernon) Willson. Searching more widely, however, I was able to locate her; though Gertrude had married and therefore changed her last name, her birth year and birthdate were correct, as were the birthplaces of her parents. Once Gertrude had been identified, further details became evident. She had married Joseph Arthur Hunter (born March 1857) about 1887, and had given birth to Herbert H. in June 1888 and Pearl G. in July 1890.  Joseph’s occupation in the census record is shown as “lighthouse keeper,” with the family living in Golden Township, Oceana County. A quick Internet search determined that the lighthouse in Oceana County is in fact the Little Sable Light, and further research revealed a listing of the keepers of Little Sable, which includes not only Joseph Hunter but, for a few shorts weeks in 1910, “Mrs. H. G. [Gertrude Helen] Hunter.” 

All in all, it appears that the Hunters were involved with the Little Sable light from 1890-1922, when Joseph retired.  Joseph’s journals from 1916-1922 have been published as well, so (as soon as my copy arrives!) I may have an even fuller understanding of what life at Little Sable was like.

Bad luck with trains tends to run in our family. Within a span of twenty-five years, four different family members came too close to passing trains, twice with fatal results.

My grandmothers made up the more-fortunate half of this catalogue. Grandma Montgomery’s incident is the one I know the least about. I know she and her mother were riding in a car that was actually struck by a passing train, and I’ve since learned that Grandma always bore a scar on her forearm as a result.  Thankfully, both Grandma Montgomery and Grandma Wilson lived to tell this tale.

Grandma Hoffmann was the luckiest of the four, although her story was no less frightening.  A neighboring farmer was taking Grandma, her mother, and her sister Marilyn into town.  They were riding in an enclosed, horse-drawn wagon, with Lena and Marilyn in the back and Grandma on the wagon seat with the driver.  As they approached the railroad tracks, Grandma said, both she and the farmer looked carefully for trains but could see none and so started across the tracks.  Then, without warning, a train was nearly upon them.  Grandma wondered if perhaps the steam had rolled in front of the engine somehow and blocked it from view. The farmer whipped up the reins, but it seemed the horse would never get across the tracks.  He did, finally, but Lena, in the back of the enclosed wagon, was so close to the hurtling train that she could have touched it!

The two fatalities made their way into local newspapers of the time, so our information regarding them is more precise.  In 1908, Charles Johnson was 35 years old and living in Nebraska with his wife and daughter.  His wife Sena was the sister of Sophie (Roberg) Wilson (who, as we have already noted, would later survive her own encounter with a train).  At first there was some mystery regarding Charlie Johnson’s death, but it appears that in the end it was considered a tragic accident.  On October 5, according to family legend, Charlie had left the family’s home in Newman Grove to participate in a homestead drawing.  By the next morning he had not yet returned, and soon the family learned the gruesome truth.  Charlie, who may have been drinking in Oakdale the night before, had either fallen or been pushed onto the tracks. The Madison County newspaper would later state that Charlie’s body was so badly mutilated that it was “gathered up in a basket.”  According to our own family historian David Johnson, the family would later joke with equal grimness that “only the moustache was left.”

The tragedy more familiar to most of us was the accident that killed Paul Hoffmann, Sr.  In September 1933, Paul Hoffmann and several other men from Fairbury, Illinois, had traveled east to meet with members of the Apostolic Christian church who were visiting from Germany and Switzerland.  The men were traveling in three separate cars, with Paul bringing up the rear; riding with him was Jacob Bohning, one of the churchmen visiting from Germany.  As the cars passed through Bucyrus, Ohio, traveling on the Lincoln Highway (US Highway 30), they crossed over a set of unguarded railroad tracks.  The first two cars crossed safely and only realized the Hoffmann car was no longer with them after traveling some 18 miles farther west.  Returning to Bucyrus, the men came across the demolished car. According to newspaper accounts, two motorists witnessed the accident and stated that the Hoffmann car drove directly into the path of the oncoming train.  On September 24, both Paul Hoffmann and Jacob Bohning were buried in the East Graceland Cemetery in Fairbury. As a direct result of this accident (which was not the first car-train fatality there), an overpass was built so that travelers on the Lincoln Highway would never again encounter trains in Bucyrus but would pass safely beneath them. Perhaps in this way other lives were saved.  Nonetheless, whenever I am driving and come to a railroad crossing, I always think of our family’s history and look carefully both ways.

In Fall River, Massachusetts, 115 years ago today, Andrew J. Borden and his second wife, Abby, were found murdered in their own home in broad daylight.  Andrew’s daughter, Lizzie, discovered the bodies.  Lizzie, of course, would eventually be tried and acquitted for the murders, though she was alone in the house for much of the two hours during which her stepmother’s dead body lay in the upstairs guest room.

Like most children, I felt I had known the “Lizzie Borden took an axe” rhyme forever, but I was further fascinated by a disturbing movie starring Elizabeth Montgomery as Lizzie Borden that played on TV in 1984.  I think it was the idea of nice Samantha from Bewitched traipsing around murdering people while undressed that terrified me the most.  In later years, Mom and I began reading books about the Lizzie Borden case, and even stayed all night at 92 Second Street in Fall River–now a bed and breakfast–which turned out to be much creepier than I expected, though Mom thought the decor was too pretty to be frightening!

I’m not sure, now, when I first discovered the genealogical connection between my Wilson/Davis ancestors and the Borden family.  Thankfully, enough time had passed since first seeing that creepy TV movie that I was more fascinated than frightened at learning I was actually a (distant) cousin of Lizzie’s.  It certainly provides an added element of intrigue when reading books about the case.  To be precise, Lizzie and I are sixth cousins five times removed.  Our shared ancestor was William Gifford, my tenth-great-grandfather, and Lizzie’s fifth-great-grandfather.  Let us hope that those common ancestors are all that Lizzie and I share! 

Every once in a while I find myself playing the genealogical “What If?” game.  What precise combination of events had to take place throughout the years to allow me to be me?  Perhaps this sense of narrowly-avoided oblivion makes those stories of ancestors’ first meetings so intriguing.

Grandma Montgomery (Blanche Wilson Montgomery) told me the first time she ever met Grandpa (L. T. Montgomery), he was part of a threshing crew working her family’s fields.  She was thirteen, and so shy she hid behind the door when she first saw him.  Eight years passed, during which Grandpa married, had two daughters, and was widowed.  Then in 1930, Grandma’s mother ran into Grandpa again in town.  She remembered him from the threshing crew years earlier and, thinking he would make a good husband for her oldest daughter, invited him out to the farm.  Shortly after this second meeting, Grandma and Grandpa married.

My maternal grandparents’ story began at a family get-together.  Grandma (Velma Swing Hoffmann) was in her teens and was surprised to see a young man at the family gathering whom she’d never seen before.  Struck by his good looks, she asked her mother who he was, only to find out he was a cousin!  She knew most of the Hoffmann cousins, of course–their father, Paul Hoffmann, had been a half-brother to her grandmother, Catherine Hoffmann Swing.  But Joe had been away in Chicago, and Grandma hadn’t realized there was a Hoffmann son older than Lee, born in 1912 (Grandpa was born in 1907, ten years before Grandma).  Grandma and Grandpa Hoffmann’s courtship was longer than Grandma and Grandpa Montgomery’s–they would not marry until 1938, some 5 years or so after that first meeting.

These stories (and all the other “first meetings” of ancestors) lead to inevitable questions.  Who would I be if Sophie Wilson hadn’t chosen that day to go into town?  Or what if Grandpa Hoffmann had stayed in Chicago rather than returning to Fairbury and attending that family get-together?  Or what if Grandma Montgomery had hidden behind that door again in 1930?