Grandma Minnie in Stories and Pictures

My great grandmother Minnie (Minna Anna Louise (Papstein) Depperman, 1888-1985) has always been something of an enigma to me.  She was in her 80's when I was born and I was only 15 when she passed away at the age of 98.  She lived all of her life in northern Illinois (with the exception of her birth in Germany -- she was 1 year old when she arrived in the US) and I lived only my first seven years in northern Illinois before moving to southern Illinois for four years and then on to Texas.  After the age of 11 I only saw my Grandma Minnie twice more before her death.  We never did get a chance to sit down and have any sort of meaningful conversation.  I wish we had. The stories she could have told me!

Grandma Minnie, her famous "upstairs" (to the right) and homey kitchen

I knew that she'd raised my mother after my mother's parents divorced, and that my mother thought of her more as a mother than as a grandmother. My own personal memories of her are few, honestly; I only clearly remember her spending time with me one on one once (though I'm sure there were plenty more times that I don't recall.)  I remember sitting on Grandma Minnie's lap and she would hand me her Vick's Inhaler, letting me sniff it to my heart's content!  Otherwise I remember playing at her house quite a bit but I'm sure I spent much more time in her basement and on her front porch than I did with her.  She was probably busy cooking and conversing with the other adults.  I remember she forbade me to go upstairs so of course the banishment made me ache to sneak up and see what all the fuss was about!  I do recall sneaking up one day and seeing a row of bedrooms and not much else, all perfectly straight and neat and clean, like they weren't even lived in! -- before I was too scared to stay any longer and snuck back down.

I most remember thrilling to her dark, dank basement, so unlike the basements that I was used to in the metropolitan Chicago area I grew up in.  She would let me play down there because it was basically an empty room with a lot of space to run circles in (which I did!)  I clearly remember climbing down the stairs and seeing an old 1930's washing machine in the right corner of the basement near the cistern and, above that, a picture of a young boy in an ornate oval frame.  When I asked who it was I remember Grandma Minnie saying it was a "picture of my boy that died."  The boy was Alvin Friedrich Depperman, who was born around 1909 and died about 1912.  I was fascinated by the picture.  The little boy's eyes followed me wherever I went but I wasn't frightened of it.  I often stopped playing long enough to look at it longingly.  I wanted to touch it, but it was too high...and I knew better.  My mother always told me that in Grandma Minnie's house I was not to touch anything and to make sure that everything I got out was put back exactly as I found it.

Often when the family would get together I would stand in the front room looking at a picture that was always near the German bible that Grandma Minnie had on her end table.  It was of a handsome calvaryman standing in front of a row of Lipizzaner stallions.  Grandma Minnie told me that the man was her father when he was training those stallions for the Kaiser.  I didn't know who the Kaiser was -- the only Kaiser I ever knew was a Roll, ha! -- but of course now I know that it was Kaiser Wilhelm I, the King of Prussia from 1861 to 1888.  My g-g-grandfather August Karl Papstein wa in the cavalry in the early to mid-1880's and must've been a skilled trainer if he was chosen to work with the prized Lipizzaners (see more about these beautiful horses here)!  Unfortunately all these pictures -- the oval frame of Alvin, the handsome man in the cavalry uniform -- and the Bible, are all lost to us now.  Likely they were sold in a sale my Grandma Minnie's family had when she had to go into a nursing home so they could pay for her care.  Grrr!

It's been very interesting to me to look at pictures of Grandma Minnie.  The pictures I have of her are for the most part taken long after she raised her children and became a grandmother.  Recently a cousin sent me a picture of my Grandma Minnie taken when she was only 10-12 years old.  I love it! I post it here.  It was likely taken about 1900.  Minnie (the eldest girl) is posing with her parents, August Karl Papstein (1864-1946) and his wife Anna Marie Louise Koehn (1868-1952), her brother Otto and little sister Clara.  Goodness but when my younger brother was a boy, he sure did look like Otto in this picture!

Tragedy was just around the corner for the family, however.  August and Anna had already lost two infants before this picture was taken.  Otto never did get a chance to grow up -- he was born in September of 1891 but died between 1900-1910 and was buried in an unmarked plot next to his parents in the Peotone (Will Co. IL) Cemetery.  Clara was born in December of 1896, married Earl Laroche around 1918, and died in 1920.  She too was buried in the Peotone Cemetery.  August and Anna would go on to have three more children before 1910 (Louis b. 1901, Elsie b. 1905 and Frank b. 1909.) Then there was a lapse -- Anna was 44 upon Frank's birth -- and then perhaps....just PERHAPS....another came along. 

Grandma Minnie in 1918

I say perhaps because I have heard two distinct stories about this last child's parentage in my family.  A boy named Edwin Papstein was born on 10 Oct 1915.  Edwin was developmentally impaired (perhaps Down's, though the nature of his developmental issues has not been passed down.) As to whose son he was?  Well, if he was Anna's she was 48 when  he was born.  That's not beyond the realm of possibility, but it is a stretch one would think?  Anyway, the other story was that Edwin was Clara's son, born out of wedlock to Clara and an unknown man.  Clara would have been 18 if this is true.  As it is, I cannot locate Edwin or Clara on the 1920 census.  Clara was to die in 1920 and if Edwin was hers, it is not surprising that her parents took him in to raise him.  Edwin is, perhaps tellingly, NOT in the household of August and Anna in 1920 although their other children are.  This isn't definitive, however; they could have placed him in some sort of facility because in 1930 Edwin is found in the Illinois Institute for Feeble Minded Children in Lincoln in Logan Co., IL.  This place was also called variously the "Lincoln State School and Colony," the "Lincoln Developmental Center" and the "Lincoln State School."  In 1940 Edwin is living with August and Anna and is listed as their "son," though a biographical paper written by my grandma Minnie on the occasion of August and Anna's 50th wedding anniversary in 1937 did not mention Edwin at all.  So....until I can order Edwin's death certificate (he died in 1983 and is buried in the Peotone Cemetery) I am simply theorizing here.  It's fun to do that though!

My grandma Minnie married Franz Herman Depperman in 1904 and they had seven children.  Franz died in 1955 and Grandma Minnie went on and lived by herself until her death in 1985.   This last picture was taken on their 50th wedding anniversary in 1954.  It is Grandma Minnie and Grandpa Franz and their children (from left to right) Frederick Walter Depperman, Herman August Albert Depperman, Anna Henrietta Bertha (Depperman) Schannon Onkin, Alfred Eric Depperman, and Franklin Louis Depperman (my grandfather.)

Grandma Minnie was a fiesty and opinionated woman and the stories my mother tells me keeps her alive.  I sure hope that the recent finds I've made on this side of the family will shed some more light on her ancestors.  These Germans (Prussians) have been too long in the dark for me!

Tombstone Tuesday - Martha Ann Browning Cooley, and Bits and Pieces

It's Tombstone Tuesday and today I feature a tombstone that is close to my heart -- that of my aunt Martha Ann Browning.

Martha was born in Crawford Co., Illinois on 16 Oct 1934 to my grandparents Virgil Browning and Beulah Garrard.  She was their only child until my father came along in 1941. 

I've written in more detail about my aunt Martha 

and my feelings about her in a previous post about my grandmother's life.  You can read it here if you wish so I'll be brief.

Martha was a bright child and a rosy-cheeked girl.  She made friends easily and was the life of the party when she was around people.  She sang in the choir and when she was in high school, about 1952 or so, someone made a record of one of her songs that I think my father still has.  I've heard it and she had a beautiful singing voice.  Funny, my dad does too.  I wish I could say I inherited that!

She married Oral Oval Cooley on 7 Jun 1953 in Robinson in Crawford County.   All the pictures I've seen of the pair look like they were very much in love and my aunt Martha was all aglow.  She became pregnant at the age of 19 and gave birth to a son on 30 August 1955.  All was not well with her, though, and she began to show complications immediately after the birth.  She developed a fever and died at the Allen Sanitarium (a hospital in Robinson IL) three days later due to hemorraging from the birth.

I've posted my favorite picture of my aunt Martha here.  She is a real beauty.  I see my grandma and my dad in her and she's just....oh, I don't know.  Doesn't she just GLOW?  Her beauty is within. 

I wish I'd known her. 

Now to the bits and pieces:

I'll be going on a genealogical trip to Little Rock in a few days along with a friend of mine. Her great-grandfather was murdered there in 1929 and we'll be hitting all the sweet spots when we're there. We'll go to the Arkansas History Commission and the Arkansas County courthouse in Stuttgart. We hope to hit Dewitt (where the murder occurred) and maaaybe even make it to a cemetery or three. For my part, I will be investigating the Strickler family (one of my daughter's lines) who moved to Washington Co., AR from Sullivan Co., TN in the 1830's.  I hope to find some wills and other goodies.  Our daughters (both age 19) are coming with us so it'll be a girl's weekend as well!

My love affair with OneNote is in full swing. I'm putting records in there and seeing it all come together and I'm really liking it so far. I can feel that this will be a big bonus for my work.

I'm also in heaven -- I've recently found Ohio Probate Records online at Familysearch!!!!

None are indexed and the image count is sky-high but I've been spending my time going through each and every image in the counties of Harrison, Coshocton, Tuscarawas, Jefferson and Washington. As you can imagine this is a tedious and time consuming undertaking. Weeks even! But that's okay -- it must be done because there's no way I'll be getting to any of these counties soon (and even if I did, I'd have to spend days in the courthouses there pouring through the records!)

So -- if my presence is a bit spotty I'm not checking out of here, I'm hopefully adding more information to my arsenal.  I've already found some real gems in the OH records that I want to explore.

Oh, and ok....I've also experienced a D'OH moment of epic genealogical fail proportions, so much so that I don't even want to admit to it here for fear that I'll have to turn in my genealogist card and go sit in the back of the class.

*sigh* I'll make myself do it. Just not now. Haha!

Cecil(e)'s Letters - Say WHAT? A Mystery Solved...

For the last ten years since my beloved grandmother Beulah Ethel (Garrard) Browning died -- and for at least ten years before that -- there had been an ongoing mystery playing in my head about her younger years.  This 'mystery'  really wasn't much of a mystery.....not really......I thought I'd had it all figured out long ago.   The mystery part I always tried to fill in with 'details' was only because my grandmother never really shared too much information about it.

Hm.  I sound as clear as mud.  I should explain.

 As I've said in earlier posts, my grandparents were unusual for their times because they waited so long to marry.  My grandmother was 33 years old and my grandfather was 32 when they married in 1934.  They'd been seeing each other since 1927.  The Great Depression and responsibilities for taking care of other family members had extended their courtship.  Every time my grandma and I touched upon the subject of her relative spinsterhood and whether or not she'd had other boys she was sweet on before meeting and marrying my grandfather, she would steer the conversation away from particulars and just talk in rather sweeping generalities.  However, at some point the conversation would always come around to one name.  Cecil Buchanan.  Or at least that's how it always seemed to me.  I never asked much about him and I just put two and two together in my head and assumed that he was the boy that she'd liked and she didn't want to go into details.  Maybe because he'd broken her heart?  I didn't know...and honestly I didn't come right out and ask.  I just made the connections and filed the name away in my head.  I assumed I knew the story.

Yes, all the genealogists in the room are snickering behind their hands.  Don't think I can't hear you.

I've also stated before that I inherited my grandmother's cedar chest and her umpteen million boxes of pictures and letters and....stuff.  Well, imagine my surprise when I found a lock of strawberry blonde hair all tied up in a ribbon, dated 1917!  It's the lock of hair and the ribbon in the picture at the top of this post.  I was all excited when I found it.  It's got his name written on it, and a lock of his hair.....and his birthdate, and her birthdate.  Awwwwwww, how teenager-like and romantic!  Ah ha, I thought! Here's some solid proof that Grandma WAS sweet on him!

Some time later, in another box buried in her things, I came across two letters that Cecil had written.  One was postmarked 1920 from Bloomington, IN and the other 1923 from Mattoon, IL.  I read through them and they seemed rather warm and loving but also rather detached.  I thought that a bit strange, really, but how was I to know hoe young people courted in letters at the time?  Anyway, after reading them over again a few times I grew curiouser and curiouser and thought hey, I have him somwhere in 1920!  I should look him up in the census!

I don't know why I hadn't done it before.  It was one of those 'slip my mind' things, I guess.  But I sat down letters in hand and started looking him up in the census.

I found him fairly easily in the 1920 Bloomington, Monroe CO IN census:

But....wait.  What's that?   Do you see it?   I thought that Cecil was a boy and this one is a girl.  Grandma always pronounced it SEE-SIL and not SUH-SEAL so this Cecile?  Hm, I thought, that can't be right.  I know,  I'll search the 1910 and see where this Cecile is:

I found 'Cecile Buchanan' in the 1910, all right.....in Crawford Co., IL.  Huh.  Right where my grandma was living at the same time.  And what's that again?  A GIRL?  Again?  Once is a coincidence maybe, or a mistake, but twice?

Ok, I thought. Is it possible that the CECIL my grandma had always talked about, and the CECILE I was looking at here.....is it possible that my grandma was talking about her BEST FRIEND???

After another few days of poking about I was beginning to think just that.  I found Cecile's marriage to Hilbert Cox and found a picture of her tombstone on a Warrick Co IN site.  Attached to the picture was an email address. I sent an email to that address and waited with bated breath.  It didn't take me long to receive a reply and to begin a correspondence with a wonderful lady who is Cecile's granddaughter.  What was even more fun was that Cecile's daughter was still alive!

I shared a long and informative phone call with both of them and I was able to compare much of what was in the letters to what these lovely people already knew about their mother and grandmother.  I learned an interesting fact very quickly, though....even though they spell it Cecile, it's pronounced SEE-SIL.  I also finally learned who the Margaret Buchanan was who took one of my favorite pictures of my grandmother, walking home from school with a metal lunch pail in 1915. She was Cecile's younger sister.

The evidence is overwhelming.  Cecile and my grandmother were chums.  Friends.  They were friends from at least 1915 until 1923, the date of the last letter.  My grandma kept a lock of Cecile's hair and even though the birthdate written on it is wrong (Cecile was actually born in Feb 1900) the people mentioned in the letters reference both Cecile's family (Helen, Margaret, Grandma Dunlap, and Elba Mudhenk) and my grandmother's family (her mother Louisa and sister Julia.)  Their tone in the letters I mentioned above?  It all made sense now.

So the mystery of the identity of 'Cecil Buchanan' is finally solved.  There's just one more thing I wonder about.  Grandma must have known what I was thinking about her Cecil.  Why didn't my grandma set me straight?

The joke's on me, grandma.  I love you dearly, you sly devil, you.  I bet you're chuckling now.  Goodness knows I am.  Hahahah!

(Not So) Wordless Wednesday - Peek-A-Boo!

They say a picture can say a thousand words?  Bah.  I always have one or two more to add to that, ya know!  "Wordless" is a foreign concept for me.  So here's the picture...

Some of the explanation is under the picture but I just have to add my few words.  I wish I knew for sure who the woman was sitting on the porch holding the two adorable little pudgy toddlers, but I don't.  It might possibly be Daisie Catherine (Rush) Browning, the first wife of Roy Browning, my grandfather Virgil's brother.  If this is Daisie, she is holding Frederick Leroy Browning (b. 1928) and Esther Mae Browning (b. 1929) and would date the picture to around 1931 rather than the c1929 I have listed. Whoever the lady is, she is smiling a mile wide, though, isn't she?  I also don't know the identities of the older boy to the left nor the older girl to the right with her finger to her lips looking puzzled.  She's clasping the hand of a smaller girl who is only half in the frame.  I don't know who the smaller girl is either.  I also like the wagon off in the distance.

I do recognize my grandfather Virgil Joseph Browning in the big hat.  He's smiling, too.  It must've been a funny moment they captured.  And that lady peeking out behind the barn with an impish look about her?  My grandmother  Beulah Ethel Garrard.  At this point my grandparents weren't married yet -- that didn't happen until 1934 -- but they were dating.

Peek a boo, Grandma!  I see you!

I also recognize the "old home place," the Browning family farm.  Well...I call it the Browning family farm, but it's really the Nichols place.  My 3rd-g-grandfather Joseph Nichols bought the land (in 1849) and built the house and established it.  It was just passed from his daughter Eliza Ursula (Nichols) Swan down to Ursula's daughter Estella Jane (Swan) Browning and then to Stella's sons Virgil, Roy and Emerson Browning. 

I recognize that porch, too, and those dark planks to either side of the door.  I remember those well.  I played many a day on that porch.  This picture sure does make me smile.

The Browning Series Part 3b, or Samuel Browning Hoy, the Young Soldier

Today I will share what I know about Samuel Browning Hoy, one of the sons of Julia Ann Browning and her husband, John Hoy. I hope you'll remember the Browning vs. Beck trial that I featured on my blog last year, but if you don't, take a look at the sidebar on the right. I promise you that you won't be bored reading the full case but just in case, here's a short summary: It was 1837. Julia was sixteen and had given birth to a son named Washington out of wedlock. She and her father accused James Beck and sued him for Bastardy, child support, and Trespass On The Case. It's a long case, with a famous lawyer (Edwin McMasters Stanton, later to become President Buchanan's Attorney General and President Lincoln's Secretary of War), likely a famous juror (Emanuel Custer, the father of General George!) and some fascinating insights into how differently trials were conducted then than they are now. It's a fascinating case and you should go read it now. Go, go, go!

Back now? Good! Okay, so some years after the trial (in 1843) Julia married John Hoy and their story was one I told here. This post is about their second child, Samuel Browning Hoy. Of all John and Julia's children, I know the most about him.

Samuel was born on the seventh day of July in 1848 in Harrison County, Ohio. He was living with his parents and his older brother William (b. c1846) and younger sister Josephine (b. Aug 1850) in Tuscarawas County, Ohio, in the 1850 census. Samuel's half-brother, Washington (the result of Julia's liaison with James Beck, b. Mar 1837) wasn't living with his mother and half-siblings; he was living with Julia's parents Samuel and Margaret (Markee) Browning.

Sometime between 1851-1855 the Hoys joined most of the rest of the Browning family relations and moved on to Crawford County, Illinois. The 1855 IL state census makes it appear that John Hoy had died, because Julia and her sons Samuel and William (by this time both Washington and Josephine were also dead) were again living with Julia's parents, Samuel and Margaret (Markee) Browning.

By 1860 Samuel's mother Julia had married again to James E. 'Melton' Legg and was living with him, his five children, and her nephew Elias Browning. You'd think she'd have her boys with her but that wasn't the case -- both William Hoy and Samuel Hoy, aged only 15 and 13 at the time, were once again living with their grandfather Samuel Browning and his second wife Sarah Ann (Bell) Gaddis Browning in Crawford County. (Samuel's first wife, and Samuel Browning Hoy's grandmother, Margaret, had died in 1856.)

The following year Samuel B. Hoy (perhaps along with his older brother William M.J.) moved with his grandfather and step-grandmother to Windsor in Shelby County, Illinois.  I'm not sure about William M.J.  If he did also move to Shelby County he'd returned to Crawford County before February of 1865, when he mustered into service in Company H of the 152nd Illinois Infantry out of he town of Palestine.  I'll mention William again in a moment.  Back to Samuel B.

When the Civil War started Samuel was thirteen and much too young to sign up immediately. He waited until 1864 (when he was 16) before he traveled to Mattoon, a city in Coles County about 15 miles northeast of Windsor. On 21 March 1864 he signed his volunteer enlistment papers, claiming that he was eighteen years old. He was assigned to the 54th Illinois Infantry, Union forces, and was told to muster in on the 30th. But on 28 March 1864, the veterans of the 54th Illinois Infantry were on furlough and had been ordered to reassemble in Mattoon. According to the Adjutant General’s Report, “an organized gang of Copperheads led by Sheriff O’Hair attacked some men of the Regiment at Charleston, killing Major Shubal York, Surgeon, and four privates, and wounding Colonel G. M. Mitchell. One hour later the Regiment arrived from Mattoon and occupied the town, capturing some of the most prominent traitors.” Copperheads were also known as Peace Democrats and were a group of anti-abolitionist Midwesterners.

Two days later, on 30 March 1864, Samuel mustered into Company F. His muster papers say he had sandy hair and gray eyes and was 5' 10".  That's pretty tall for a boy his age!  Anyway, his regiment was immediately on the march and the young Samuel could not keep up. During the march Samuel began growing lame in his left foot. The company moved to Duvall’s Bluff and Clarendon and fought General Shelby, and in time Samuel’s lame foot degenerated into a running sore with small bones working their way out of the upper front part of the foot. The foot prevented him from marching and he had to be hauled in an ambulance part of the way back to Duvall’s Bluff. He was given light duty for the remainder of his service. His regiment was then assigned to guard a section of the Memphis and Little Rock railroad. Many of his regiment were captured during a battle near the railroad, but Samuel’s company was spared.

I said I'd mention Samuel B.'s older brother, William M.J.  As I said earlier, William had also joined the war, mustering into service out of Palestine in Crawford County, IL, in February of 1865.  According to the muster and descriptive rolls of Company H, William was 6’0” with dark hair, dark eyes and a dark complexion.  His regiment was assigned to duty as a railroad guard for the Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad until July of 1865.  A month before that, on 2 June 1865, William died of an unknown disease (most likely smallpox) in Tullahoma, Tennessee.  I haven't ever been able to locate his burial.

On 20 August 1865, two months before he mustered out, Samuel was hospitalized for chronic diarrhea in the General Hospital in Little Rock, Arkansas. He was released for duty on 28 August 1865. Samuel mustered out on 15 October 1865 and was discharged at Camp Butler on 26 October 1865.

Sometime after his discharge Samuel went to a party at the home of Cornelius Stephenson of Robinson. According to Charles F. Huls and Sarah Ann (Huls) Browning, the spouses of Samuel’s first cousins Margaret Ann Browning and Thomas Nevitt Browning (children of James Browning), Samuel did not dance because of his lame foot but walked with a cane. Samuel was employed by Martin B. Woodworth between 1866 and 1870 as a day laborer. Martin also employed Effie Emmaline Browning (Samuel’s first cousin and the daughter of Samuel J. Browning) as a domestic servant. Samuel worked for Martin out in the fields but Martin claimed Samuel would “frequently give out on account of his lame foot.”

Samuel married Emily Ellen McCarter, the daughter of Samuel G. McCarter and Polly Ann Cannon, on 11 September 1875 in Crawford County. Emily was born on 5 July 1851 in Crawford County. Samuel and Emily Ellen settled in Montgomery Township in Crawford County and had four children (John, Charley, Lillie and Oscar.) In the mid-1880’s Samuel pursued a soldier’s pension, which was granted, and Samuel and Emily spent the remainder of their married lives in Heathsville and Flat Rock in Montgomery Township.

Emily died on 2 February 1930 in Flat Rock and was buried on 4 February 1930. After Emily’s death, Samuel went to live with his son John William Hoy. John, who never married, took care of Samuel for the remainder of his life.

Here's where it gets interesting. When he took Samuel in to take care of him John William applied for an increase in pension for Samuel and during the filing, documents were prepared that seemed to support Samuel’s original statements to his recruiting officer that he had been eighteen years of age at the time of his enlistment. I have copies of Samuel's original soldier's pension files and one of the documents within is a copy of his enlistment papers. This document, signed in March of 1864, specifically states that Samuel was eighteen (which would place his birth in 1845-6.) These documents, along with Samuel’s typed state death certificate and the typed county clerk’s copy of his death certificate, give his year of birth as 1845.

However, I also have his original death certificate. It is handwritten. Take a look at the listed date of birth. Don't you think there is clearly a numeral "8" underneath that numeral “5”? I do.

While it is possible that Samuel had been born in 1845 there is stronger evidence to make a case for the 1848 date. In the 1850 census Samuel was two years of age; in the 1860 census he was thirteen. On the birth certificate of his second child, Charles (born in March 1879) he stated he was thirty years of age. At the birth of his third child, Amy Lillian (born in March 1881) he claimed he was thirty-two years old. As these birth certificates were prepared at the time of the event and not years afterward (as his pension documents were) only one conclusion can safely be drawn: I think that Samuel or his relatives desired to protect his youthful decision to claim lawful age at the time of enlistment (not to mention making sure that the government couldn't demand his pension money back for lying on his enlistment papers!) In reality, Samuel was not yet sixteen years old when he entered into service in the Civil War.

Samuel died on 3 April 1931 in Flat Rock in Crawford County and was buried on 5 April 1931. Both he and Emily are buried in the Robinson New Cemetery in Robinson Township in Crawford County, Illinois.

Anna, Minna and the Remaining Triplets (1918)

It's late and my intended post got inadvertantly deleted, so I'll add a simple picture and make this an almost wordless post (hahahaha, what a joke!) and consider it late as always.

This picture was taken in the late fall or early winter of 1918. The two little boys are the surviving siblings of a set of triplets. The two are my grandfather Franklin Louis Depperman and his brother Frederick Walter Depperman. The picture is not labeled and the notations in white under the picture are my own, but I am pretty sure that my grandfather Franklin is on the left and my g-uncle Frederick is on the right. The third sibling, their sister Florence, had died at six months of age in September 1918 of milk sickness.

Their mother Minna Anna Louise Papstein (1888-1985) is sitting to the right, in mourning black. Minnie had married Franz Herman Depperman (1879-1955), the son of Hermann Depperman and Henrietta Sennhausen, in September of 1904. By the time this picture was taken the couple were the parents of five living and two deceased children. The triplets were the last born.

Minna's mother Anna is sitting to the left. Anna Marie Louise (Koehn) Papstein (1868-1952), the daughter of Johann Koehn and Johanna Vierkow, was born in the Hinterpommern in Prussia (now Poland) and came to the US with her husband August Karl Papstein. August Karl (1864-1946), one of a set of twins himself and the son of Friedrich Papstein and Wilhelmina Koplen, served three years in the Prussian cavalry before his marriage to Anna and trained Lippanzer stallions for Kaiser Wilhelm I prior to his immigration to the US. He married Anna in October 1887 (very soon after he left the cavalry) and the couple had their daughter, Minna, before coming to Will Co., IL in March 1889. August (and by marriage, Anna) were both naturalized in 1894.

My German\Prussian ancestors are a tough bunch to research and locate. I have so little on them in comparison with my father's side of the family. However, I do like this picture. My great-grandmother Minna looks sad because she'd just lost her little girl, but her two remaining boys are adorable!

The Browning Series -- Part 9A, the Life and Tragic Death of Charles Otho Browning pt 1

With this post I continue what I call "The Browning Series." Samuel and Margaret Browning had thirteen children between them and after Margaret's death, Samuel chose a widow named Sarah Ann (Bell) Gaddis for his second wife. The two of them had two more children together. My plan has been to feature each one of the fifteen children in a separate post and finally tie the family together with a discussion of their parents.

This post is the first of three about Charles Otho Browning, the second child of Asbury Taylor Browning and Minerva Corderman.

Charles Otho was born on 6 April 1856 in Crawford County, Illinois. His mother was assisted at his birth by his aunt Matilda Corderman, who became a 'double aunt' of sorts to him when she became the wife of Charles' uncle John Wesley Francis Browning five months later. Upon the death of his father, Asbury Taylor Browning, Charles' mother Minerva pursued a minor's pension for Charles and his siblings. Her sister Matilda swore an affidavit stating she'd been present at his birth.

By 1859 the family had moved to Cumberland County, Illinois; by the time Charles lost his dad (1863, to smallpox) he was seven years old. Two years later he and his siblings were living next door to his aunt Matilda and his cousins Sarah Viola and Alice. I'm not sure how the two women were supporting themselves and their children but both were without their men -- Minerva because her husband was dead, and Matilda? Her husband (John) was either dead, had left her, or had went to serve in the war.

The years 1867-1873 were years of change in Charles' life. On 26 December 1867 his mother Minerva remarried and Matthew James Starbuck, a man who'd served alongside his father in the War, became his stepfather. Matthew and Minerva continued to live in Greenup Twn. in Cumberland County for a few years. Charles and his sisters Sarah and Emma were soon joined by at least one half brother, or maybe two. It's for certain Matthew and Minerva had one son, David Clinton Starbuck (born either on 23 September 1870 or 1871) but it's not as certain they had one other, Peter Starbuck, b. c1872-3. It's very possible that they did and the boy died along with his mother. Minerva passed away on 5 May 1873 and within two years Matthew remarried, this time to a much younger woman named Ellen Cook.

I don't know what happened to Charles and his siblings or where they were living in the years between their mother's death and 1877, the year that Charles' sister Sarah married Alfred Newton Criss. The following year, on 8 August 1878, Charles married Laura Belle Tritt, the daughter of Joseph Tritt and Sarah Snider. (You can see a picture of Laura c1900, shown above and to the left.) Charles and Laura were married in Jasper County, Illinois. Matthew Starbuck and his family, including David, moved to Benton County, Arkansas, but Charles and his siblings chose to stay in Illinois.

Charles and Laura traveled back and forth between Illinois, Nebraska and Kansas in the years after their marriage. They first settled in Jasper County and lived there for a few years (their son Frank Tritt Browning was born there on 23 October 1879) but had moved on to Shelton in Buffalo County, Nebraska by the time their daughter Tena May was born on 8 September 1884. They lost a daughter, Elna, there about the same time. By 1887 or thereabouts, when their last child (son Charles Otho Marion) was born, they were living in Marion County, Kansas.

I dont know for sure what Charles did for a living in that time period but I can hazard a decent guess. He was likely working for the railroad system in some way. The St. Louis and San Francisco Railway Company, commonly called the Frisco, had two main lines: St. Louis–Tulsa–Oklahoma City and Kansas City– Memphis–Birmingham. The junction of the two lines was in Springfield, Missouri, home to the company's main shops facility. While the Frisco didn't run in Buffalo County, Nebraska, by 1886 two others did: the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad through Garfield township and the Union-Pacific through Shelton. Both connected to Kansas City.

This is to become important to our story. Charles might've lived by the railroad....but he died by it, too. The conclusion, next time!

(Edited: because of a sudden illness in the family, my posting might be a bit haphazard the next couple days. Bear with me. Thanks.)

Pt 7, cont (pt 2) -- the children of James Hoy and Margaret Browning

If you haven't been keeping up with this group of postings on James and Margaret (Browning) Hoy, catch up by reading the first post and the second post. This time, as promised, we'll be asking (and answering) some other questions to establish the identities of the children of James Hoy and Margaret Browning. I'll keep it simple here, and save their deeper stories for future posts.

According to the census records between 1850-1870 James Hoy and Margaret Browning had a total of nine children (Sarah, James, Susan, Emma, Edward, Jane, Victor, William and Zara.) The couple's bible records place the number at seven but leave off a last child, which if added would bring the total up to eight. There's an inconsistency here that needs to be examined in greater detail. So let's look at each child in detail.

(I've tried to list the children in their best guess birth order, excepting Sarah Ellen and James Franklin. The bible lists them as Sarah born 1851 and James born 1852 and as the rest of the bible listing appears correct for birth order, why not this? The state censuses can support both; the only one that makes any distinction is the 1860, where James is listed as older than Sarah. Further evidence also supporting James as eldest? -- Sarah was reported born in IL on the 1860 while James was listed born in OH. I don't have death certificates for either one. Lacking any firsthand evidence, I'll use the bible list even though my own belief is that James was older. I tend to use the bible birthdates for James and Sarah but switch their order.)


Sarah Ellen:

Sarah is shown in the family bible born 19 April 1851 and in the 1860 census at 7 years old, placing her birth closer to 1852-3. Other than the 1855 and 1865 censuses that show a female roughly her age in the Hoy household, there are two more censuses that she might be in, the 1870 and 1880 Crawford County censuses. In the 1870 census a Sarah HOY is listed with two other known children (William and Zera) in the poorhouse of William Beers in Hutsonville. This is by no means a certainty, though, because the Sarah listed here is 25! The drastic leap in age from the 1860 to the 1870 census is not believeable to me unless there was a transcription error somewhere. But where? The 1860 census would make more sense if one flipped the dates of birth for Sarah and her brother James F. but even if you don't do that, the age leap from 7 in 1860 to 25 in 1870 is just too great, not to mention the fact that her parents James and Margaret didn't even marry until 1850.

While the presence of both of the youngest sons of James and Margaret in the same poorhouse make a strong case for this unknown Sarah's relationship to them in some way, the age difference is pronounced and I have no idea exactly who this Sarah Hoy was. I've looked at all other possible Sarah Hoy connections (as in, did James have a brother who married a Sarah? Did James's brother John have a daughter named Sarah? etc.) and there are no other options for women with this name and in this age grouping. Now poorhouse records would have been wonderful and might've cleared everything up (and after 1874 poorhouses were required to keep them!) but I had my cousin Pat look into it and it doesn't appear that the poorhouse keepers in Crawford County maintained them (or if they did, the courthouse no longer has them) prior to the law of 1874 or even after. Bleh. Anyway, this unknown Sarah E. was located in 1880 living at another poorhouse run by James Boyd in Martin Twn. and this time says she is 38, born in Ohio, and both her parents were born in Illinois. The Sarah in 1880 was listed in the DDD schedule as a consumptive.

Could the census taker have made a mistake and she was really 15 instead of 25? Sure, it's definitely possible, and it might not even be the census taker's error. It could simply be a bad translation of his handwriting by the recopier. Did you know that the "original" census pages we see are actually copies? It's true. From 1790-1940, field census takers went door to door writing down the information in pencil. Then someone else transcribed the information in ink for the final version that was sent to Washington. A second copy was sent to each state. So were mistakes made, even with some basic issues like age and gender? You bet your booty!

But was this done in this case? I don't know. The Sarah E. in 1870 is 25, the Sarah E. in 1880 is 38. Unless the mis-transciption was two-fold and it was really supposed to be 15, and 28, then perhaps not. Ah, to be able to look at the Crawford County poorhouse records....*sigh* As it stands, I've had no luck finding any other record giving me clues to her whereabouts after the 1880 census.



James Franklin:

James, b. 19 Apr 1852 according to the bible but whose census records seem to place him closer to 1851, is almost a complete mystery to me. According to descendants of Edward J. Hoy (James F. Hoy's younger brother) James, approximately 15-18 yrs of age upon his father's death, took on responsibility for some of the younger children and moved to Cumberland County, Illinois. If this is true it occurred after the 1870 census but I have no way of verifying this information.

The bible record states he married a "Milly F." in 1870 but I'm not sure how much stock I put in this particular notation. If this bit of information is accurate, and they married in Cumberland Co., IL (where at least three of the Hoy children ended up by 1875-ish) then any record of it burned in the Cumberland County courthouse fire of 1885. I feel it more likely that when Ruhama (Cliff) Harris wrote the bible entry (in 1925) she blended the two James Hoy's, father and son, in her memory. Recall that after Margaret (Browning) Hoy's death, James Hoy married Amelia Funk. Milly is a very common nickname for Amelia. Therefore Milly and James as a 'couple' could easily have lodged itself in Ruhama's mind and she placed the Milly as the wife of the son and not of the father. A marriage license I have adds some credence to this argument. A "Mrs. Milly Hoy" married Alfred Marsden in Crawford Co., IL in November 1876. At that time Milly was 33 years old, making her birthdate 1843. It's possible she married James Franklin Hoy first in 1870 but he would have only been about 19 years old to her 26. It's possible but unlikely. I believe that this is James Hoy the elder's widow, Amelia Funk Hoy, instead. Amelia Funk Hoy was born in 1843.

I have another small clue to the actual identity of James F.'s, wife, taken from the recollections of Mildred Mae (Stepp) Maglothin, Edward Jasper Hoy's granddaughter. Mildred remembers her mother and stepmother (who were sisters) talking about their uncles. Mildred's recollections were that James married a woman named Caroline or Emmaline, moved to Colorado, and died in Boulder. I've never been able to verify this, I haven't found him on any other census, and I don't know anything else about him.


Susan:

Susan was not mentioned in the bible record at all. She was mentioned in the 1860 census (where she is suddenly 9 years old and born in OH, placing her birth c1851 as well) but she's never been located anywhere else. She wasn't represented in the 1855 census or the 1865 so, if she was missed in that one, perhaps she died between 1880-1865. I don't know. I leave her name here because she was listed in the 1860 and for that reason alone. Perhaps someday I'll find some other clue.


Emma Alice:

The bible says Emma was born in January of 1854. Ruhama (Cliff) Harris was Emma's daughter and I believe this birthdate is an accurate date.

So how do we know that Emma was James and Margaret (Browning) Hoy's daughter, especially since she wasn't named on the 1860 census with them? We use other records, of course! In 1870 Emma was living in Washington township in Harrison County, OH, with John and Rachel (Browning) McConnell. Her relationship to the family is not given but surely there's some weight to the fact that Emma is found in that household, far away from Illinois? Rachel McConnell is inarguably one of Samuel and Margaret (Markee) Browning's children (and hence Margaret Browning's sister), a fact that is stated in Julia Ann Browning's witness testimony in her case against James Beck (see my sidebar, Browning V. Beck Pt. 1 for documentation.) Recall that later, Julia Ann married John Hoy! So while Emma's relationship in this regard is not definitive, it's certainly circumstantial.

But there's more. While I have no idea how long Emma stayed in Ohio, she was back in Illinois by 1879. She married Zeno Cliff, the son of Benjamin Cliff and Lydia Calvert, on 3 July 1879 in Effingham County, Illinois. According to her marriage certificate Emma, age 26, was born in Crawford County, Illinois, and was the daughter of James Hoy and Margaret Browning. This document, and her 1925 Los Angeles Co., CA death certificate (that lists her father as James Hoye but mother is blank) is also strong evidence that Emma was James and Margaret's daughter.

Emma and Zeno moved to Canon City in Fremont County, Colorado around 1890 or so. Zeno died in Canon City on 30 January 1912 and after his death, Emma moved along with her children to California and spent the remainder of her days there. She died on 17 September 1925 in Huntingdon Park in Los Angeles County, California.



Edward Jasper:

Edward is inferred on the 1855 and 1865 censuses and listed on the 1860 census outright as well as being listed in the Cliff family bible. I think that's pretty good evidence that he is James and Margaret's son. In the 1870 census he is 15 and is found enumerated with the family of Dr. Nathaniel Steele. The only connection I've found between Dr. Steele and Edward or his family is some records bunched in the probate and estate filings of Samuel J. Browning (Edward's uncle) who died in September of 1862. Dr. Steele was the physician that treated Samuel during his final illness as well as the illnesses of his wife Sarah and their infant son. It is unknown how long Edward stayed with the doctor, but it is not unreasonable to assume he lived there until his eighteenth year.

Some time between then and 1880 Edward moved to Cumberland County, where he married Harriet Rawlings on the 1st of January 1880. Harriet was the daughter of John Dennis Rawlings and Mary Feltner. Her father had been a 1st Lt. with Co. A of the 5th IL Cavalry out of Cumberland County. He had been in the same company and had fought side by side with Edward Hoy’s uncle Asbury Taylor Browning. Edward and Harriet settled in Greenup in Cumberland County. In March 1889 Edward signed some paperwork for Luthera (Gray) Reynolds, the widow of Samuel Reynolds. He attested to his knowledge that she was the person she claimed to be for the widow’s pension application she filed for her husband Samuel’s Civil War service.

Edward and Harriet lived in Cumberland County until Edward's death. The date of his death is not certain, for no death certificate or gravesite has been located, but a newspaper article written by his daughter Martha Elizabeth (born 27 Nov 1898 in Greenup, Cumberland Co., IL) states that her father Edward died when she was 11 months old. This places his death in the fall of 1899. His descendents say he died on Halloween.

I haven't found anything more about him in the actual records. Most of what I know about Edward comes from his descendants.


Jane:

Jane is another of the Hoy children whose identity is in question. The bible record mentions a Mary Jane born in 1857. The 1860 census shows a 3-yr old Jane, so those two records certainly seem to coincide. In 1870 a Mary Hoy, age 13, is found living in the household of Thomas and Mary Corbin in Palestine, Crawford Co. IL. This also seems to match our Mary....or Jane.

The only other record other than the census I've been able to find that matches this girl in any way, shape or form, is a marriage license from Crawford County, IL. A Miss Mary Hoy from Palestine married Thomas Briggs on 4 Sept 1878. The license states specifically that she is the daughter of James Hoy and Margaret Browning. Forgetting the age difference (age 19 in Sept 1878 likely puts Mary born 1859, not 1857) her name on the license is clearly Mary F., not Mary J. You can see this most clearly by comparing the capital "F" from the groom's number of marriage to the full name of the bride on the second page of the document.

I've looked and looked and cannot find the source that gave me the middle name Frances. I seem to vaguely remember finding it on a courthouse document in Crawford County but if I did, the source is lost to me and I'm loathe to continue using it in lieu of not being able to refer to it directly. But even given the slight differences in names, it does seem to me that Jane, Mary Jane, and Mary F. are all the same person.

Be that as it may, I've never been able to find Thomas and Mary on any later censuses. I found a widowed Mrs. Mary Briggs living in Montrose in Effingham County, Illinois, in 1924 but whether this is Mary/Jane (Hoy) Briggs, I have no idea.

There is one other bible notation for Mary. It says, "d. 24 Feb ?" I've filed this information away but I certainly haven't placed it with any certainty.


Charles Victor:

This is the "Advickus" of the 1860 census. He was born on 13 December 1859 according to the bible record, a date that was tndependently authenticated by some of his descendents. He isn't found on the 1870 census at all and I couldn't locate him anywhere until he married Nancy Ellen Miller, the daughter of Brice Miller and Rebeckah Trader. His descendents say they married on 6 June 1882 in Cumberland County but I can't verify this due to the loss of the marriage records in the county prior to 1885.

I have much family history about Charles and Nancy and their children and what led up to Charles's death from typhoid fever in Paragould, Greene Co., AR on 31 Mar 1906, but it all comes to me from the mouths of descendents. What research I've done to locate firsthand records has been for naught, since Arkansas did not begin keeping death records until 1914. Nex stop for me is the newspapers. Perhaps I'll find something there!


William:

William's birth is listed on 26 Nov 1860 according to the bible record. He isn't found on the 1860 but he's inferred on the 1865 census. He was also listed in the 1870 Crawford County census in Hutsonville Township, age 8, living in a poorhouse managed by a man named William Beers with Zera Hoy (a known child of James Hoy and Margaret Browning) and Sarah Hoy. His presence there definitely implies his close relationship with the Hoys he's with. Another "William" is also listed in the household of Roland and Elvira Fuson. This William is aged 9. I'm not sure if William got counted twice on the census, if he was actually living with the Fusons and was at the poorhouse visiting at the time of the census there, or if the older William is actually Edward or Charles Victor.

William is yet one more tricky cog in the Hoy wheel. Perhaps the trickiest of all! There wasn't much to go on with him at all. He apparently never married and loved to lie to census takers. Descendents of Edward Jasper Hoy had the best leads on him I was ever able to find when they told me that he ran afoul of the law by bootlegging whiskey to the Indians in Idaho and ended up in Ashton in Fremont County and was buried there. I started poking around and found an incredible story, one I'll have to share soon.

His census records definitely show his dislike of the law and (perhaps) his growing paranoia as the years went by. In 1910 he used his own name and approximate age and stated his correct state of birth and that of his father's. By 1920 he used his brother Jim's name instead, shaved 5 or 6 years off his age and gave a fake place of birth. In 1930 he expounded on the fake birthplaces even more, going so far as to state he was from Kentucky. I guess he didn't want anyone using anything against him.

He had an interesting life and an even more interesting death in 1936. I've got his death certificate but it doesn't help prove that he's James Hoy and Margaret Browning's son. The informant was a neighbor and knew nothing about him whatsoever. The only thing I have to connect this William Hoy with mine is the family stories of descendents. I suppose it has to be enough.


Zara:

Zara is the last child of James and Margaret Hoy (b. c1862) and the only one that doesn't show up in the bible record. He's inferred on the 1865 census and is shown living in the poorhouse with William and Sarah Hoy, but other than that, how are we to know that Zara is James and Margaret's son?

Surprisingly, Zara is the one with the most records connecting him to James and Margaret. Even if that didn't exist, though, there is adequate circumstantial evidence pointing that direction. Just his name is one thing. Margaret Browning had a brother named Zera C. Browning. You don't find Zara's all over the place, you know!

Let's see....oh yes. Zara was married a number of times. The first time he married Lillie Brownfield in St. Marie, in Jasper County, Illinois on 27 Apr 1887. The marriage license lists him as the son of James Hoy and Millie Browning. I imagine Zara, never really knowing his mother Margaret, mixed up her last name with his father's second wife Amelia's. By March 1889 Zara had moved to Cumberland County as he (along with his brother Edward) signed paperwork for Luthera (Gray) Reynolds' widow's pension application.

When Zara married a second time on 3 June 1891 to Emma Ray in Greenup in Cumberland County, he also listed his parents as James Hoy and Margaret Browning. In addition, the man who married them was none other than John D. Rawlings, Edward Jasper Hoy's father-in-law. More circumstantial connections to help Zara's cause, and Edward's.

I'm pretty sure I've located Zara later in life, too, and that if I have he died in 1921, but that will have to wait for a further post! I need to order some documentation to make sure.


Wrapping up, I think it's safe to say that eight is the correct number of children born to James Hoy and Margaret Browning. The only maybe is Susan, a child only represented on one census (the 1860). I haven't removed her from the list of children because of her showing on the 1860. Until I can prove definitively otherwise I feel she should stay but as a general rule I don't think she's a separate individual. "Susan" is the same age, roughly, as Emma, the only child we know belonging to James and Margaret that wasn't shown on the 1860. Could this have been some odd sort of nickname for her? Could the census transcriber have accidentally written down a name from another place? Sure. Mistakes happen. I do know, however, that Emma belongs in this family. I don't know that Susan does.

The Browning Series -- Part Seven, or Margaret Browning and James Hoy

Samuel and Margaret Browning had thirteen children together and some of them are harder to find than others. I've spoken before about John Wesley Browning, perhaps the most elusive of the bunch, but today I feature the family of another of the Browning children: Margaret.

Margaret, Samuel and Margaret (Markee) Browning's seventh child, was born in Harrison County, Ohio around 1826. Margaret certainly met her husband James by the time she was 15 or 16; her older sister Julia had married James's older brother John Hoy in 1843. It took another seven years before James and Margaret finally decided to get married in Harrison County on 10 July 1850. Their marriage license is to the right.

(A quick note about John and James Hoy. The boys were from a family of eight children of Edward Hoy and his wife Elizabeth. The family immigrated to the United States from Elm in Cambridgeshire, England. On 17 August 1837 the Hoys (Edward and wife Elizabeth, William and wife Sarah, and sons John, James, Thomas, Solomon, Joel, Joseph and Benjamin) landed in the New York harbor after setting sail on the Ship Superior from Liverpool.)

Two months after their marriage in September of 1850 the young couple were living with John and Julia (Browning) Hoy and their three children, William, Samuel and Josephine, in Mill Township in Tuscarawas County, Ohio. John and James were laborers, living next door to a farmer named John Taggart whose farm was valued at $6000. I wonder if they were working on his farm? It's also interesting to note that neither Hoy could read or write.

By 1854 James and Margaret had moved to Crawford County, Illinois; their daughter Emma was born in Crawford County in April of that year. It isn't surprising that they chose to move there. Much of Margaret's family had already moved to the area -- Margaret's uncle James Markee and his sons (Margaret's cousins) had moved in the late 1840's, and Margaret's parents Samuel and Margaret (Markee) Browning had arrived in 1851 or early 1852. I've often thought that James and Margaret probably traveled to Crawford County with John and Julia Hoy.

Leaving aside their children for the moment (because there's enough confusion there to leave for another entire post!) let's explore what became of James and Margaret themselves.

Margaret was found on the 1860 Crawford County, Illinois census with her husband James and their family but by the time of the 1865 Illinois state census (taken in July) things had changed. Although this census doesn't list names, it does list age brackets; the age bracket of the elder female household member in 1865 (20-under 30) differs from that of Margaret's, which in 1865 would be the 30 - under 40.

I was tempted to think that they'd just made an error but I started poking around and found the following marriage in Vol. B., pg 169 in Crawford County, Illinois:

HOY, JAMES to FUNK, AMELIA E, 13 Nov 1864.

Amelia was the daughter of William M. Funk and Matilda Seaney. She was born around 1843 and fit perfectly into the 20-under 30 age bracket in the 1865 census. Hmmm......

I now had a pretty good idea that Margaret had died between 1860 and 1865. I wanted to narrow it down a little more so I first looked around at all the cemeteries in the area with no luck. Then I found that James Hoy had registered for the draft in Palestine, Crawford County, Illinois, in July of 1863. I hoped that it would list whether he was married or not (many of the registers do list this) but unfortunately, this one didn't. Rats! Well, I had one way to narrow her death down....the birth of her last son, Zera (who we will explore in further detail in my next post about this family) in either 1862 or 1863. So between 1862 and November 1864 is as as close as I've been able to come and it may just have to suffice.

As far as I can tell James and Amelia had no children of their own. I don't find James anywhere in the 1870 census. At the time of this census all of James and Margaret's children were parceled out amongst relatives and friends, and a few even lived in the Crawford County Poorhouse. Amelia was living with her brother Augustus C. Funk in Palestine. All this tells me that James Hoy had died between November 1864 and the June 1870 census. I have hopes that there are guardianship papers, perhaps a will....probate files.....anything. I've made cursory looks and have come up with nothing but I intend to look in more depth the next time I'm at the Crawford County courthouse.

Next time, their crazy kids!

My Grandmother's Life, Pt. 6 - The Winter Years

(See HERE for previous posts in this series...)

After Aunt Martha's death in 1955 it was just my father and my grandparents. My dad finished high school and then decided to enlist in the army in 1960. He was stationed in Germany for 3 years and after he got out he moved to Chicago, where he met and married my mother in 1964. I was born a few years later and my brother a few years after that. We lived in Chicago until the mid-70's, when we moved to Robinson and lived there for four years before finally moving to north central Texas.

For my grandparents life went on at the old home place. The home place had originally been a three-room house with an outhouse but grandma and grandpa had slowly added on to it as their family had grown. I have a datebook that grandma kept from 1954-1960 (and sporadically after that) and it states that they added an addition to the living room in 1951 and finished the upstairs (expanding it from one room to two) in 1953. My grandmother also wanted indoor plumbing and my mom says that grandpa balked about that for years but finally grandma got her way, winning the battle of the outhouse in the early 70's. By the time I ran around the house playing, in the mid-70's, there was a small bathroom right off the kitchen and the outhouse was all boarded up.

That was the way grandma was, though. She didn't say much for the most part, and pretty much let my grandfather run things, but when she did want something or had just had enough of something, she usually got her way. Grandpa knew very well to relent the few times that grandma pitched a fit or put her foot down. They worked well together that way.

By the 80's, though, my grandparents were both in their 80's. My mom and dad and my brother and I had moved to north central Texas, my grandmother's siblings had all died and my grandfather's only living brother was also living in north central Texas. Getting through the Illinois winters was growing more difficult for my grandparents and grandma was tired of being away from her son. Grandma wanted to move to Texas. Grandpa? Well, he had his roots in Illinois soil and he didn't want to leave.

Of course you can guess what happened. They went to Texas!

They had a huge sale before they left Robinson and sold a lot of the old things that were in the house. I didn't realize how much history they'd sold until many years thereafter and even now, thinking about it, it makes me sigh in resignation. I was too young to know what all that would someday mean to me and grandma would say not to cry over spilled milk. I just hope that whoever bought all that old stuff appreciates it like I would if it were mine. Anyway, grandma told me once that a few years after they moved to Texas, grandpa told grandma that he wanted to go on back home. Grandma said she told him, "Virgil, you are welcome to go back to Robinson whenever you want, but you'll have to go on alone."

Grandpa stayed.

It was a good thing they did. Grandpa got sick from leukemia in late 1988 and died in December 1989. I tell that story in the first installment of this series, HERE.

I have so many other memories of my grandmother during those years she lived with my dad after my grandfather's death. Smiling with her at her 100th birthday party, surrounded by her family, and asking her how it felt to be 100 and laughing at her answer: "The same as it felt to be 99."

I also remember that grandma would watch every time my mom came home from the store, looking to see if they'd bought her a refill on her favorite Brach's butterscotch candies. She had a bell that sat by her chair in her room that she would ring if she needed anything. I remember her laugh and her tiny, hoarse sounding voice that was music to my ears. I loved the way her eyes would sparkle when I'd come into her room and visit.

I especially remember her when I was pregnant with my own daughter in the early 90's. She would pat my belly and tell me to take care of myself and I knew that she was hiding the worry she felt and reliving those times with my Aunt Martha in her head. My dad was doing the same. My parents brought my grandma up with them when I went into labor and he, my mom, and my mother in law sat outside the entire 12 hours smoking up a storm in their nervousness. Goodness, the three of them probably created an entire ozone layer on their own!

It was wonderful to lay my daughter in my grandmother's arms. I treasure the picture above. I treasure the fact that my grandma not only lived long enough to forge a relationship with me but also lived long enough so that my own daughter will always be able to remember her "great-nah-nee." I miss her every day and I will go to my own grave missing her.

She had a very long and wonderful life. I am so very privileged to have called her Grandma.

My Grandmother's Life, Pt. 5 - Joy And Tragedy

For previous posts in this series:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

We are up to the part of the story where my grandparents and their young daughter Martha Ann were a happy little family in Robinson, Crawford Co., IL, in the late 30's. The Depression years were over and though times were hard, they weren't as hard as those that had come before. My grandparents owned a house and a good amount of land and had a wonderful little girl to raise. Life was hard but simple and times seemed pretty good for them then.

Then, when my Aunt Martha was about four years old, in late August 1938, tragedy struck their little family. I've written about it all here but I'll briefly recap it again. My grandma and her family were eating dinner with her mother and father, Robert Elbert and Louisa Adaline (Eagleton) Garrard, at their house in Robinson. After dinner grandpa Robert went on outside to the outhouse and on his way back was struck by a runaway car that had rolled over the lawn. Grandma told me many years later that her father, aged 85 at the time, had suffered internal injuries and that it took him a few hours before he passed away.

A few years later, in late 1940, my grandmother and grandfather were surprised when my grandma realized she was pregnant. It had been nearly seven years since she'd had their daughter Martha Ann with no pregnancies in between and I imagine Grandma had just figured Martha was it for them. She was 40, after all! Life, however, has a funny way of giving you what you need -- even when you don't realize that you will at the time.

Grandma told me about my father's birth many times. She said she was frightened when she learned she was pregnant and had nightmares about not being able to carry to term or of dying during the birth. She said these fears were difficult to deal with when she begun to feel sickly midway through her pregnancy. Her doctor told her she'd become anemic. Who knows if she was truly anemic, if she had what we now call toxemia, or perhaps she even had gestational diabetes. Whatever it was, grandma said she felt weak and miserable for most of her pregnancy. I can only imagine how she dreaded giving birth.

These fears were magnified about eight months in when she caught the flu. She was already weak enough and the flu put the so-called icing on the cake. She was bedsick and weak and soon to deliver. A neighbor lady, Kay Badgley, came to my grandma's rescue. She stayed with grandma and took care of her while she was sick and was there to help grandma through giving birth. Grandma told me that Kay saved her life by both assisting in my father's delivery and making sure that grandma herself did not succumb to either the flu or to any complications of childbirth. My grandmother was so grateful to the woman that saved her life that she acknowledged her by giving her son -- my father -- the name Kay as his middle name.

I hear Dad hated it with a passion when he was a teenager. Hah!

My father was born in the spring of 1941 just as World War II broke out overseas. Later on that year my grandparents woke up one morning, a morning that was also my grandfather's 40th birthday, and heard horrible news on the radio. Pearl Harbor had been attacked. World War II had started for us.

The war years were full ones for my grandma and her family. Work was hard to come by. I remember grandma saying that grandpa worked for the WPA for a time but I am not sure now of the dates. When grandpa got a job in Sidney (in Shelby County, Ohio) working in a machine factory where they made tools for the war the family moved to Sidney and lived there for about three years (c1942-1945.) I recently discovered that Grandma's brother Ralph Garrard had also moved to Sidney, something that grandma never told me. I wonder whether Ralph had moved there first and secured my grandfather a position, or was it the other way around? I don't know. Nevertheless, when grandma's mother Louisa died in a old folk's facility in Alton IL in 1944, grandma and her brother were in Sidney.

Grandma and grandpa and their two children moved back to Robinson and settled once more in the old home place. The next ten years saw them raise their children and see Martha get married to her sweetheart Oral in June of 1953. By the beginning of 1955 my dad was attending his first year of high school and his sister Martha was pregnant with her first child.

Things couldn't have been sweeter for grandma and grandpa, but then tragedy struck again. Martha gave birth to her son in August of 1955 but began to have complications almost immediately. Grandma told me that the doctors let her lay there instead of attending her. She was slowly hemorraging; she developed an infection that caused puerperal fever and she hemorraged to death three days after her son was born. She was 20 years old.

Martha's death devastated my grandparents. I never got the chance to ask my grandfather about it because he'd passed away before I began my genealogical quest in earnest, but I know how deeply Martha's death affected my grandmother. The journal entries and notes that I have from her during this time period reveal that. I've often looked at the picture to the left (which I believe was taken just around the time of Martha Ann's death) and studied the tired, drawn looks that both my grandparents are wearing. They look like all the joy in them had been sucked away. As a mother myself to a daughter very close to Martha's age, I cannot imagine. Well, take that back. I can imagine, and even that makes my stomach clench and my throat tighten up. I'd rather not imagine, much less experience.

Even now, though I never actually knew my Aunt Martha Ann, I feel as if I have because she's always been a part of my life. Grandma's cedar chest holds mementos of her life. Martha's high school diploma, a pair of glasses she wore, pictures and a compact mirror she kept in her purse, pieces of her writings, old report cards....the list goes on. I have seen Martha's image so many times and heard her spoken of so often that her living self feels ingrained in my sense-memory, as if I've been face to face with her in the real world. Does that sound strange? It doesn't feel like it, if it matters. My conversations with my grandmother were never without her and I suppose that helped implant her in my head. Besides, Martha Ann's son -- my cousin -- is an absolutely fantastic man and my favorite cousin in the whole wide world. Grandma told me once that his jolly attitude about life reminded her constantly of Martha, so not only do I have her face to look at and my grandmother's memories to bring her to life, but I have a reflection of who she was in her son. My aunt died a decade before I was born, but I had her around anyway.

One last thought before I close for today. I mentioned earlier that life tends to take care of you and give you what you need even when you don't realize that it is. My grandmother wasn't trying, wanting or expecting a second child -- but she got one anyway. I have often wondered if my dad came along because life knew that my grandmother would need that extra child, and not just in the wake of her daughter's death. My dad took care of his parents during their winter years and my grandmother lived with them in the last years of her life. Of course I'm glad they had him because neither I nor my own daughter would exist without it! But if they hadn't had him and Martha had died? They would have truly been all alone. I'm glad it didn't end up that way.

Next time I'll wrap it all up.

My Grandmother's Life, Pt 2.

I continue today with the story -- only the roughest of edges, for how can I ever hope to fully tell the story of a woman who saw over 100 years? -- of what I know of the life of my grandmother, Beulah Ethel (Garrard) Browning.

I was thinking about this all day at work and began to remember things that I'd forgotten, small vignettes my grandma shared over the course of our closest years. She loved that I asked about her life and she loved sharing those memories; her eyes would light up and her normally soft voice would grow stronger. I think it was because she had lived so long. She told me once, in response to a question I had about how long she'd lived, that she sometimes disliked it because she'd had to watch everyone she knew and loved as a girl, a young woman, a friend, a mother and a wife -- die. She had strong faith in God, though, and would tell me she believed that God had His purpose for giving her years and she was not one to question His wisdom. As I said in my last entry, I am so very glad those years were hers and mine.

But back to her story and some of the things I remembered.

I own her cedar chest. The chest was given to her in 1932 by her then-beau and later husband, my grandfather Virgil Joseph Browning. In it she kept mementos of her life and I scurried back to open it and look through some of those while telling her story. I believe the things in that chest all meant enough to her to keep them and I will try to tell the stories of as many of those items as I can. Here are some of them.

This picture is of a tea set that Mrs. Mary Hoke presented to my grandmother as a Christmas present in 1909. This tea set is so delicate and tiny! Each little cup is the size of my thumb. I remember grandma saying she adored that set and played with it often, being very mindful to wrap each item carefully when she was finished playing with it. Until today, when I went to take this picture, I had never seen it unwrapped myself. The entire set has always been stored in a wooden matchbox holder and wrapped in tissue. Accompanying the set is a small handwritten note detailing when she received it and by whom. When I unwrapped if for this picture I found, however, that one little saucer is missing. That's too bad! Otherwise it's a beautiful little set and I can see my grandma playing with it and valuing it for its delicacy.

So grandma's school years came and went. When she was 16, in 1917, her older brother Raymond Orlond Garrard went off to France to serve in World War I. The picture here was taken that year and shows her in a gorgeous white dress. I think she looks young and fresh and splendid, don't you? She wrote Raymond letters and wrote other servicemen as well. I used those letters to trace one of the serviceman she wrote and I managed to get those letters back to his descendants! I've told grandma's story about those times before here on my blog and if you're interested (including seeing a picture of her wearing her brother's uniform!) you can go here and also here.

Another interesting item is a tiny Methodist Episcopal Hymnal. Copyrighted 1850 Cincinnati and published by Swormstedt & Power, Corner of Main and Eighth-Sts, R.P. Thompson, Printer," the front page of this book (in my grandmother's handwriting) says "Presented to Beulah Garrard by Auntie Allison, aged about 89 years this Sept 29, 1920, been in her possession for at least 65 years." This book also has, in another person's handwriting, the name "Mary Jane Willson." I found a Mary Allison, aged 90 in the 1920 census, living in Crawford County. I'm pretty sure she's the "Auntie Allison" that my grandmother received the hymnal from. More research necessary!

By the time she was 22 in 1923 she and her best girlfriend Gwendolyn Norton (who later married a Hackett) decided they needed to go to Olney in Richland County, Illinois, and work at a shoe factory. They boarded with the parents of a Mr. Eska Russell while working there because, grandma said, it wasn't proper for two young women to be on their own! In the picture here she is holding her hat and looks for all the world like a girl home to visit from making her own way. She worked there for a year or so, boarding with two separate families -- the Russells, parents of Eska Russell, and the Routsons -- before coming home sometime in the fall of 1925. I know this because another item in the chest was a unique cup that my grandmother called a moustache cup. She gave it to her father Robert as a christmas present in 1925. She couldn't find one to buy so she obtained it from Mrs. Routson, according to the notes I took.

Between 1924-1926 my grandmother was seeing a boy named Cecil Buchanan. I have quite a few letters from him to her and whenever she mentioned his name she said it in a way that told me that he was a special boy to her at the time. (Update:  Cecil ended up to be Cecile, one of her best GIRL friends!  Go read the funny story about how I learned that little fact.) But somewhere in there they broke up and my grandmother met another boy, one named Virgil.

Next time....her life after meeting my grandfather.