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!

Tombstone Tuesday & The Browning Series Pt 10(e) - Susannah Olliezona Crago

With this post I combine two different sorts of genealogy 'prompts.' 

The first is Tombstone Tuesday, so today I feature the stone of little Susannah Olliezona Crago. This simple stone is at the Labette City Cemetery in Labette County, Kansas.

The second 'prompt' is one more of my own making.   I've been doing a series now for the last couple of years that I call "The Browning Series."

Samuel and Margaret Browning had thirteen children and after Margaret's death, Samuel chose a widow named Sarah Ann (Bell) Gaddis as his second wife.  Samuel and Sarah had two more children together.   My plan has been to feature each one of the fifteen children in a separate post (and often, their children as well!) and finally tie the family together with a discussion of their parents.

Susannah Olliezona Crago was the fifth child of Isaac Fordyce Crago and Susannah Browning.   Susannah Olliezona was born in 1871 in Noble County, Indiana.  She lived in Noble County for a few years after her birth but moved with her parents to Labette County, Kansas at some point around the year 1879. She was found in the census in June of 1880 living with her parents in Fairview Township in Labette County.

Olliezona is such a unique name, isn't it?  Ever since the first time I saw it I've liked it.  It rolls off the tongue.  Because of the sound of her name I always pictured her as a sweet little blonde child, her two pig-tails bouncing as she played in the Kansas sunshine.  Silly old sentimental me.

But she got sick one day......maybe.  Maybe she got injured somehow, or maybe she had a congenital problem.  Who knows.  But at some point between the time of the 1880 census in June and December of 1880, this sweet little girl died, and most likely in Fairview Township.   We'll never know for sure what killed her but as her mother Susannah's date of death was 1881, is it possible that the two were victims of some sort of illness?

Little Olliezona was buried at the Labette City Cemetery in Labette County, Kansas.  Rest in peace, sweetheart.

(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.

Happy 69th, Mom!

My mom is 69 today.

From the beautiful little flaxen-haired girl in the pink dress:

To the young girl smiling in a school photo and playing in a kiddie pool:

....to the newly minted Mrs. Browning.....

to a mother, quite understandably exhausted:

 She's the best friend a person could ask for and a helluva nurse to boot....

...and the most awesome grandmother in the world!

 She's a lot of things to me.  She's not just my mom, she's a friend.  She's the woman I turn to when I need a level head with a splash of cold water or a shoulder to cry on and a comforting word of advice. She's got a will of iron and a feisty soul and more smarts in her little finger than most people I know.  I'm a lucky lady to call her my mom.  I love you, Mom.

Happy 48th, Mom and Dad!

My parents are celebrating 48 years together today.  Congratulations, Mom and Dad!  May you have many, many more.

New Illinois Adoption Laws

As of last November, the state of Illinois has changed their laws regarding adoptions.  Adult adopted persons (21+) born in Illinois can request non-certified copies of their original birth certificates through the Illinois Department of Public Health.


There are slight differences in the laws depending on whether the adopted person was born before 1 Jan 1946 (birth parents of children born after this date may request that their names be deleted from the non-certified birth certificate within their lifetimes, and all birth parents may indicate their preferences regarding contact with the adult birth children) but this new law is still the most open that the state of Illinois has ever been.

Amen!

Go here to read more about the new laws:

http://www.newillinoisadoptionlaw.com/

Black Sheep Sunday - The Murder of William Hoy

I wrote about William Hoy a few weeks ago and completely forgot that I should have included him on a Black Sheep Sunday!  So do click here and read his story!

Hallelulah! (or however you say it in German)

Tonight my good friend Suzi (she writes a new genealogy blog here so do go there!) and I were talking genealogy, as we often do when we're together.   I was telling her of my longstanding troubles finding the passenger lists for either of my mother's German grandparents, the Deppermans and the Papsteins.

In the Papstein case (August Karl Papstein, his wife Anna, and their daughter Minna) I have some naturalization records and a story written for their 50th wedding anniversary about how they met and where they lived in Germany (Koslin District, Neu Lobitz/Janicow, Kreiß Dramburg, Hinterpommern, Prussia (now Poland) and what August did (served in the German Cavalry training Lippanzer stallions) and the date that they came over (29 Mar 1889, no sure place where they disembarked, but they ended up in Peotone, Will Co., IL.) I've had no luck finding them in the lists, however.  None.  Grrrr.

Then there was the even trickier one -- my great-grandfather Franz (Frank) Herman Depperman.  Franz ended up marrying Minna, the daughter of August and Anna.)

I'd been looking online for Franz for years, and in books for years before that, with no luck whatsoever.  I told Suzi the little I thought I knew --  that family stories had been that Franz had come over from Germany as a teenager and had spent some time in Pennsylvania as a barber before finding his way to Peotone in Will Co., IL.  As the years passed I wondered if these stories were completely true because I found that his mother Henrietta had died in Peotone, so that meant she'd come over too.  I also learned that she had married at least twice more....once to a Schmidt and once to a Johann Koehn.  She was buried in Peotone next to Johann.

 I'd tried every possible combination of spellings that I could think of to look for Franz and his mother (and for Johann too since the immigration date was 1897 on the 1900 census.) Nothing.

I was convinced that both my German families had just grown wings and flapped over here.

Anyway, Suzi was looking over the lists on Ancestry with me and out of the blue she said,  "Have you tried D-O-E-P-P-E-R-M-A-N-N?"

*blink*  Huh.  No.  No, I hadn't.  I typed it in, and POW!  There it was!  Ta daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

I am fairly certain I squealed.

The stories were true or at least partially so.  My great-grandfather didn't come over alone, but he was a teenager, and he came over with his mother and stepfather (mistranscribed as Kolhn) on the ship Switzerland out of Antwerp, Belgium.  Whatever were they doing in Belgium?  They landed in Philadephia, Pennsylvania, in May 1896, and there's the Pennsylvania connection.   They were from either Bramburg or Dramburg -- it's hard to read.  Which one do you think it is?  I hope Dramburg since so were my Papsteins, and even if the two families didn't know each other in Germany (which I wonder about -- Franz's mother-in-law Anna Papstein's maiden name was Koehn!) it allows me to concentrate on one area of Germany for further research.  Their passage was paid for by a man named Ferd/Fred/Ferdinand Nickel, Johann Koehn's son in law.  Is that Johann's daughter's husband from a first marriage, or Henriette's?  Who knows?  Anyway, they were going to join Ferdinand in Peotone.

I looked down the list and saw another teen going to Peotone named Gustav Borwig.  He states he is going to be with his uncle Ferdinand Nickel. So who is Gustav?

Well, I have more avenues of research now.  I will have to find out who all these people are and that'll be fodder for another post.  As it was, I jumped up and gave Suzi a big old hug.

She said, "My bill will be in the mail."

Now THAT'S a debt I'll be happy to pay!  *cue genealogical Happy Dance music*

Happy 71st, Dad!

My dad is 71 today.

From the infant held in his mother's arms:

To the young Elvis lookalike:

 ...and playing in a rock and roll band.....

















To the newly married husband:

To the loving son taking care of his aging mother, my adored grandmother:

And of course, a fabulous father and grandfather!

For the many roles you've played in your 71 years and to the many people in your life that you've touched, I want to thank you. Keep on keeping on.   I love you, dad.

The Browning Series Pt. 7g, or The Elusive William D. 'Jim' Hoy

A couple posts ago I shared the life story of Samuel Browning Hoy, the second child of John Hoy and Julia Ann Browning.  Today I"m going to feature Samuel's "double cousin" William D. Hoy.  William and Samuel were double cousins because William's father James was John Hoy's younger brother and his mother Margaret was Julia Ann Browning's younger sister.

There are always people in your family tree that stump you and William is one of these.  I was lucky to find him, actually -- without the help of some cousins (descendants of William's older brother Edward Jasper Hoy) I don't know that I would have found him!  He was a traveling man, that's for sure, and a lot of what he did to make a living was on the other side of the law.

I wrote briefly about William in this earlier post, and in this one, when I discussed his parents James Hoy and Margaret Browning.  At that time I teased him a bit by saying he was a bootlegger and died an interesting death.  Now's the time to reveal all!

William was born on 26 Nov 1860 in Palestine in Crawford County, Illinois.  He was one of the youngest of James and Margaret's brood.  His father James was a farmer and no doubt the family lived on a farm in the vicinity for some years prior to the Civil War and afterward.  They were still living in Palestine in July of 1863 when James was one of many men listed from the Palestine Princt as a Class 2 draftee.  James stated he was 44 at the time.  I've never found any proof that James was called to serve. 

I don't know much about the draft lists and it would benefit me to learn more.  I know the difference between Class 1 (men between the ages of twenty and thirty-five years and unmarried men between thirty-five and forty-five) and Class 2 (pretty much everyone else) and that men who were mentally or physically impaired, the only son of a widow, the son of infirm parents, or a widower with dependent children were exempt from the draft.  But if they were exempt did that mean they weren't written down on the lists at all?  I ask because James Hoy was listed.

I am not sure when things went south for William and his family but I can narrow it down to a window of a few years.  William's mother Margaret died at some point between the birth of his younger brother Zera (likely early 1862) and October of 1864, when his father married Amelia Funk.  Since I have no death record, burial record or tombstone to refer to concerning Margaret's death, this is where the Drafts list comes in.  Right now my window for Margaret's death is 1862-1864.  If the rule was "if a widower with children, do not list on draft records" and James is listed, then it would stand to reason that James was not yet a widower in July 1863. His name on this list would narrow the window of Margaret's death a bit, to between July 1863 and October of 1864.

William probably barely remembered his mother, if at all.  He had better opportunity to remember his stepmother but even her time with them was short-lived.  She was with the Hoy family for at least one year but less than five; by 1870 she was living with her brother Augustus Funk.  By all appearances James Hoy had died between 1865-1870 and his children were scattered out all over Crawford County.  What I find sad is that by the age of 10, William had lost both his parents.

In 1870 there is a bit of a question about where William was living.  He appears to be listed twice in this census: once in Hutsonville Township in a poorhouse run by a man named William Beers with his younger brother Zera and a woman named Sarah Hoy (perhaps his eldest sister?) and second in the household of Roland and Elvira (Ellison) Fuson in Honey Creek Township. Guardianship records for any of the Hoy children would be fantastic but so far I've come up with nothing. 

William’s whereabouts from 1870 until 1910 are sketchy. He never married or had children (but that might be up for argument?) and was by all accounts a traveling man. He has been particularly hard to trace after 1870 because throughout his life he gave either misleading or false information to the census takers.  He was at least migrating northwards because the next time I find him for certain (in 1910) he had settled in the village of Ashton in Fremont County, Idaho. He was boarding with Charles Nordvall, a divorced man from Sweden who'd come to the US in 1871.  Nordvall was the proprietor of a livery and William was listed as a carpenter.  

During this time (1902-1910) William made friends with a man named Benjamin Alvin Matthews and according to all the sources I have, this friendship was a long term one.  It was also to end in tragedy.

Benjamin Alvin Matthews was born in July 1858 near Scipio in Millard Co., Utah and was the son of James Matthews and Mary Ann Johnson of England.  In 1900 Alvin and his wife Mary McArthur and their children (including a son named Wallace) were living in Scipio. Around 1902 or so Alvin and his family moved to the Green Timber district in Fremont County, Idaho.  By 1910 Alvin had become a widower (his wife Mary died in 1904) and had moved to the Green Timber precinct.  By 1920 he had moved again, living in dwelling number 105 in the Warm River precinct.

In dwelling number 156 was a man named "James" Hoy. "James" (now listed as a Snake River trapper) stated that he was 55 years old, had been born in Iowa, and that he didn't know where either of his parents had been born except that they were from the "U.S."  That this man is William is almost certain.  He'd just decided, I suspect, to use his brother's name.  I also have some reason to suspect he'd been using it for a while.

Anyway, by 1930, William had moved to another part of Fremont County, in the Green Timber Precinct near Ashton.  He made a homestead about a mile or so from his friend Alvin Matthew’s ranch.  This time, he stated his name as William D. Hoy and that he had been born in Kentucky.  He also stated that his father had been born in Scotland and his mother in Ireland.  He again claimed he was a river trapper.

 I know some of you are wondering how on earth I figured out that James Hoy and William D. Hoy were the same person. Well, I don't know that I would have if I hadn't had a helpful bunch of newspaper reports to assist me!  They're all posted here.  Take a look at all of them.

 These sources also indicate that William entered into some sort of business partnership with Alvin Matthews. I don't know for certain but my best guess is the manufacture and distribution of  whiskey, for sometime in1935 William was held in the Fremont County jail in St. Anthony on charges of selling whiskey to the enrollees in the Porcupine Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camp near his homestead.  Charges were not pressed and William was released.

One Sunday, on 29 March 1936, Alvin Matthews ventured up to William’s cabin east of Ashton for a visit but did not return.  The next morning Matthew’s son Wallace went up to the cabin to find his father and found that Matthews had shot William six times, killing him.  The two men had argued sometime during the course of the day or into the evening.  The coroner determined that William had most likely died sometime on Sunday afternoon or evening. The remains of a still and a quantity of whiskey were found at the scene and Matthews was highly intoxicated.  Matthews was placed under arrest on Monday morning and held in the Fremont County Jail.  During his stay he acted strangely and spoke of suicide.  Three days later, on Thursday, 2 April 1936, Matthews was found dead in his jail cell.  The coroner’s jury ruled his death a suicide. You can read more about it in the article to the right.

William was buried in the Riverview Cemetery in St. Anthony near the Snake River in Fremont County, Idaho in an unmarked grave.  Benjamin Alvin Matthews was buried at the Pineview Cemetery in Ashton and you can see a picture of his tombstone here, taken by John Warnke and posted on Find-A-Grave in 2006.

Obviously the deed that Benjamin Alvin Matthews did weighed upon him heavily.  Who knows what happened up in that cabin; if the men were drinking and got angry, whether they argued about past slights or if they weren't seeing eye to eye on any of the business dealings they had with each other.  Maybe one too many insults were flung around along with the alcohol and the guns.  Whatever happened, once he sobered up Alvin could not live with the thing that he'd done, which was kill his best friend.  As I read all these articles and absorb what happened in the aftermath of the shooting and subsequent suicide, I don't find anything in my heart other than sadness. A lot was lost that day, a lot more than just William's life.  Alvin's children and grandchildren lost their loved one as well.

A few more final thoughts and theories about the elusive William D. 'Jim' Hoy.  In my last post I asked that Jodi Blackhawk contact me if she would.  I did so because she left me a note about a possible connection.  I will speak more about that connection now and you'll see why I hope she will contact me. 

I said earlier that I didn't have any record of William's whereabouts from 1870-1910.  That's 40 years!  A man can marry and have grown children in that span.  Maybe this is something that William did. From members of his brother Edward's descendents I learned that William ran afoul of the law by bootlegging whiskey to the Indians in Idaho.  Though he ended up in Ashton in Fremont County and died there at the hand of his friend, some of his life in the interim might make more sense if he, is, indeed, the Jim Hoy that Jodi mentions in her comment on this post.

According to her elders, Jodi's 2nd-great-grandmother Yeehavitz, a Shoshoni born on the Fort Hall Indian Reservation in 1868, married a James/Jim Hoy and had two children with him. (Fort Hall, a mere 110 miles from Ashton, was a stop on both the Oregon and California Trails and exists in present-day Bannock and Bingham Counties.)  Jim left Yeehavitz to look for work but was gone so long that she remarried, to a Joseph Blackhawk.  Jim Hoy apparently came back years later and Joseph told him never to return or risk losing his life.  Jim never did come back and Yeehavitz's son by Jim, Henry, was Jodi's great-grandfather.

Could the Jim Hoy who left Fort Hall be the same man as William D. Hoy, who used Jim as his nickname in Fremont Co., ID?  It's certainly possible.