A New Conundrum!

 More than once I have experienced obtaining a family history document that provoked more questions than it answered. Last week was the topper! In a nutshell, here’s what we have:

My mother’s grandfather was Edward Gustav Adolph Wenz. He was born Gustav Adolph Wenz, but when he fell in love with a beautiful French Catholic girl named Grace Eugenie Vautrinot, he converted to Catholicism to marry her, took on Edward as his given name and became known to everyone as Edward G.A. He was born in what his daughter, my Great-Aunt Marie, referred to as New York’s “Lower East Side” on February 12, 1869, which is documented in his Social Security record. 

Edward’s father was Philip Henry Wenz, a German immigrant who is currently my longest-standing brick wall. I have not been able to nail down even a firm birth year or parents names, much less a birthplace. In German research, you must have a town or city of birth to make any headway with your research. His wife was Theresa Rose Theissen (spelling variations occur on both given and surnames). 

Edward’s sister was Matilda “Tillie” Eleanor (Wenz) Maitland. Edward’s daughter, Marie Rose (Wenz) McLaughlin was my Great-Aunt Marie. She was very interested in history, and apparently wrote to Tillie around 1956 and asked her about the family. One particular sentence in reference to Theresa, Philip’s wife, is key here: “why her father changed the name to Richards I don’t know, when he came to New York and married again.”

Well, that was tantalizing! In most records that give Theresa’s maiden name, it’s a variation of Thiessen. But in two documents, it is Richards. In the first, her own Massachusetts death record, the name of father is recorded as Joseph Richards. Her son F. Wenz (presumably Frederick) was the informant on this record. In the second, the sister of Fred and Tillie, Henrietta “Hattie” Wenz’s birth record from New Jersey in 1878, the mother’s name is recorded as “Theresa Rosa Richards” (see my transcript of her birth and other  documents below). 

Well, that’s where things have stood for decades. Then Family Search offered me the following hint:

The birth record of Gustav Richards, born 12 February 1869 in Manhattan, son of Henry Richards and Theresa Theison. WHAT?!? I got to see an image of the original document last week and the only new information it gave me was the address “3rd Ave,” the parents’ birth places of “Prussia” and the father’s occupation is “Cook.” In the vast majority of documents that give Philip Henry Wenz’s occupation, it’s usually baker or confectioner, so cook fits, as well as his presumed place of origin typically recorded as being Prussia.

So - is my great-grandfather Edward G.A. Wenz or Gustav Richards? Is Philip Henry Wenz Henry Richards? I thought it was Theresa’s father that changed his name to Richards? I’ve never seen a document of Philip’s with any other surname than Wenz. And what are the odds that two babies would be born on the exact same date in NYC with the same mother’s name? And why would Wenz be Richards? I’m flummoxed. The supporting documents follow. 

As a post-script,when the 1920 census first came out, I learned that Theresa’s birthplace was recorded as Aix-la-Chappelle, which is today’s German city of Aachen. But in the field for Philip’s birthplace? Three little letters, marked through, which when scanned at a high dpi and blown up to a full-sized sheet of paper read: unk. 

Wait til I meet him on the other side…

A goosebump moment

 I've written previous blog posts about my cousin, Philip Young Justis, who survived Utah Beach during WWII but was killed in July of that year. He was the only child of his parents. Those stories always haunt me. And Phil's birthday was also my son's birthday, February 16th. There don't seem to be many photographs of him, I only have a fuzzy one and a bad photocopy one. 

This afternoon, I was going through the photographs I had on familysearch.org with my Mom to see if there were any more details to add to what I had. 

We were looking at this photograph.

 I knew the mother with the baby was my grandmother, Dorothy (Irving) Wenz, and the gentleman next to her was her father, Linus Dudley Irving. But even though I've had this photograph for many years, I never knew who the two men on either end of the bench were. 

At first, neither did my Mom, but she exclaimed "Oh! That's Uncle Reggie!" He was her favorite uncle, and his wife Mabel Irving was a sister of Linus. Then came the goosebump moment - we both realized at the same time that the young man on the right was the son of Uncle Reggie  - Philip Albert Justis. 

What a blessing to have a decent photograph of him. It really pays to get the stories out of the older generation!

A life cut short.

Born in Prestwich, Lancashire, England in 1895, William Archibald “Archie” Longmire had quite a history. The year after the Scout Association was formed in Great Britain, Archie received the marksmanship award. 

Pitlochry Boy Scouts in camp, Dunfallandy F.H.

Before WWI, he attended the University of Glasgow. Archie is on the front right of the photograph.

In 2019, we were able to walk through the campus of the university, which was not unlike walking into a set of a Harry Potter movie. 

 Archie served in WWI, although all we know about his service is that he was a Private in the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry and that he went to France. 

His daughter Pamela was always so proud of this medal of his: 

 After the war, he found employment with the United Fruit Company and travelled to Jamaica, where he met the beautiful Marjorie Louise McDermott. 

They married in Jamaica in 1928, and then in 1930, their first daughter, Pamela Louise Longmire was born. Then tragedy struck. Archie had an ulcer, which ruptured. He died on February 20, 1932. It seems that before he died, he asked Marjorie to go and live in Scotland with his family. The passenger list shows a sad entry: 

Apparently, it did not go well, as Marjorie returned with Pamela to Jamaica later that year. To compound her sadness, she was pregnant and had come into contact with someone who had measles. The baby, Heather Violet, was born onboard ship, died quickly and was buried at sea. Pamela remembers her mother telling her that the baby was perfectly formed but covered with measles. A sad tale indeed.

P.S. It was an email from the website findmypast.com informing me of a new record set of passenger lists that turned up the passenger list and the impetus for writing this post. 

The Rain in Spain...

 Now, I grew up in Massachusetts. I know how to "pahk a cah." My bruthah went to Hahvahd. But when my grandmother told me her father worked for the Plymouth "Cottage" Company, I was puzzled. A company that specialized in cottages? Is that like a craftsman bungalow? Well, as it turns out, her accent seemed to have been thicker even than mine. He worked for the Plymouth CORDAGE Company. So if you are having trouble finding a surname, place name or other name, see if you can misspell, mispronounce or mis-cursive it. Another example is my French ancestral surname Vautrinot. Often it is mis-transcribed Vantrinot. But when I check that Vantrinot, all the other pieces fit and it is one of my ancestors.

No coincidences!

I've written multiple times about coincidences and serendipity, which frankly, I don't believe in. I know these wonderful events happen for a reason - a glance in just the right direction, opening a book to just the right place, a person in the right place at the right time. That happened during my recent fall break, when I went with my friend Sue to Massachusetts, where we wallowed in history, including some family history. We drove down to Plymouth to find the final resting place of her ancestor the Reverend Chandler Robbins (1738-1799), who was interred with his wife Jane (Prince) in Plymouth's Burial Hill Cemetery. The cemetery itself is chock full of history - it was the location of the first fort the Pilgrims built, as it gives a spectacular prospect out over Plymouth in every direction.

As we drove up the hill to the cemetery, we noticed a beautiful stone church adjacent to the cemetery. Sue wondered aloud if we could take a peek inside, and I hoped so too!

As we turned right to find a parking place, Sue decided to drive around the block behind the cemetery, but as it was a one way street, we had to just drive around the other way and come in by the church again. As we parked in front of an old black pickup truck, Sue went to conquer the parking meter app and I looked around. A gentleman came running up from the church shouting "You're not going to give me a ticket, ah ya?" (accent included). No, I reassured him, we weren't the meter maids, we were just trying to take care of paying the meter. He and I got to chatting, and I mentioned my grandmother was born in Plymouth, her name was Mary Guidetti. "Oh," he said, "she must have worked for the Plymouth Cordage Company!" Impressed by his knowledge of Plymouth history, I told him that she didn't, but her father and uncles did. Then he told us he had been a firefighter in Dedham, Mass. Dedham? Well, didn't I have several generations of family who lived in Dedham? I told him so and mentioned Wenz and Vautrinot. His jaw dropped and he grabbed my arm. "Mary Wenz?!? I LOVED Mary Wenz! She WAS the American Legion!!" Mary Wenz was my Mom's first cousin - their fathers were brothers. And after speaking for a few minutes, he had me talked into donating Mary's father's photo album to the Dedham Historical Society.

Philip Wenz fought in World War One and was invited back by the town in France they had liberated. Phil was a photographer and labeled the photographs very carefully. I have always wanted it to go to a good home where it can do some good.

As it turns out, Nick is also involved in the refurbishing of the beautiful old stone church, the First Parish Church. The building we saw is the fifth church built on the site, the first constructed in 1648 (the original fort on Burial Hill was also their first gathering place for church services). So, we not only got that peek, we got the cook's tour!

Inside the foyer was a plaque commemorating the ministers of the First Parish Church from 1606 to 1922. Included in the list was Sue's ancestor Chandler Robbins!

Coincidence? Serendipity? You be the judge...

Unintended Consequences

 I've said it before - there are no coincidences in family history! So here is part one of a continuing saga of my Italian ancestors:

A few years ago, as I was serving in our church's temple in Atlanta, Georgia, I felt, rather than heard, my late grandmother say: "What have you done for my people?" (And that's exactly how she would have said that!) Well, Italian research is not easy. Although Italian culture stretches back thousands of years, Italy as a nation was not unified until 1861. Before that time, records are primarily found in the Catholic Church. I did have a great deal of success back in the late 1970s by writing to the local mayor in Cento, in the Province of Ferrara. But beyond that, I haven't researched much more than that. On paper, my surnames from Italy are: Guidetti, Fortini, Tassinari, Campana and Tosi. So I set that thought on the back burner and continued research on the other branches of our family's tree.

Just after last Christmas last year, I came across an envelope of my Gramie's newspaper clippings. As I sorted through them to determine their genealogical value, I found the obituary of her first cousin's husband, Humbert Pirani. He married Lucy Guidetti, daughter of Umberto and Louisa (Ardizzoni) Guidetti. 

I added Humbert to my familysearch tree, and as I usually do with new relatives, added him to my ancestry tree as well. Boy, did that make the green leaves bloom! I finally created a separate tree in ancestry just for Humbert and his family. Now I have over 2,000 names in that tree!

A few interesting developments have come from building Humbert's family tree:

• There are many other surnames in my DNA match list beyond the names on my paper tree, and many appear in the Pirani tree: Balboni, Breveglieri, Tangerini, Cavicchi, Gallerani, Ferrari, Pacheco and Barbieri. 
• One of my great-grandmother's brother came to Massachusetts, a previously unknown fact.
• Often on pages of documents relating to the Pirani tree, I would find names from my own tree. Now to connect the dots and see how they relate to me.
• One of my best friends in high school was Donna Marzilli. That name shows up in the Pirani tree.
• I have a good friend whose last name is St. Onge. He's from Haverhill, MA. Some of Humbert's relatives married St. Onges.
• Recently I was given the wedding guest book of my great-aunt's wedding in 1937. Helen Dorothy Smith was my grandfather Edmund Smith's sister. She married Amerigo James Guidetti. His sister Mary married Edmund. Confused yet? But in the wedding guest book I found more linked surnames from the Pirani tree: Gallerani, Ferrari, Baldi, Malaguti, Alberghini and Bergonzoni.
• I've always known that Ferruccio Lamborghini was also born in Cento. Now the Lamborghini name appears in the Pirani tree ten times!

One of the best things about this research has been learning more about my own Italian ancestors. It seems that the vast majority of the Italian immigrants who came to Plymouth as my great-grandparents did worked for the Plymouth Cordage Company. I was able to visit the museum at the former building while we were in Massachusetts last summer. I learned how it was that so many of the people from the Province of Ferrara came to Plymouth. 

So like Forrest Gump's box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get! Stay tuned...

What are the odds?

 I love cemeteries! Any cemetery will do, but mostly the old ones. My mother calls them open air museums. And she should know, as she served for several years as the Commissioner of Cemeteries for the State of Rhode Island. She even made the New York Times! https://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/29/us/29land.html

So on a recent visit to my home state of Massachusetts, my husband and I made a point of visiting Mount Auburn Cemetery in Massachusetts. Mount Auburn is significant because it was the first designed garden cemetery in the United States, different from a church graveyard. It is also significant as the final resting place of historical figures as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Edwin Land, Julia Ward Howe, Arthur Schlesinger Jr, Robert Gould Shaw, Winslow Homer, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Fannie Farmer, Williamina Stevens Fleming, Nathaniel Bowditch, Charles Sumner, Charles Bulfinch, Dorothea Dix and Doc Edgerton, to name a few. (If you don’t know who these folks are, it would be worth your while to learn). 

The view from the Longfellow family plot.

Nathaniel Bowditch, considered the father of modern maritime navigation.

The Boston skyline from one of the hills at Mount Auburn.

Commemorative monument to Union soldiers who lost their lives in the Civil War.

Mount Auburn is a beautiful spot, covered in trees and shrubs and laid out in a leisurely manner that invites wandering. After Mount Auburn, we decided to visit another cemetery on the way back to my brother’s in Belmont, a suburb of Boston, appropriately named Belmont Cemetery. We had no particular connection to the cemetery other than it was on the way back. There were a few findagrave photo requests that I could search for. 

When I get to a cemetery like that, I like to find the oldest section. There in Belmont, I found the surname Trenholm, which I recognized from my husband’s family tree, with burials that dated back to 1858. His Trenholms came from Yorkshire, England to Nova Scotia. Further descendants migrated west to Ontario and then into Michigan. But why not? So I photographed all the Trenholms I found. 

While posting the photos to findagrave, I also checked to see if the family was on familysearch, and indeed it was, but only partly. Some folks were missing, and there were duplicates as well. While I was putting it all together, I decided to check to see if there was a relationship between these Massachusetts Trenholms and my husband’s family. Indeed there is - George Willard Trenholm, the father of the family buried in Belmont, was a sister to Mary Trenholm, who married Thomas Keillor Jr. Apparently this branch of the family migrated from Nova Scotia to Boston.

What are the odds? There is nothing coincidental in family history. 

Belmont Cemetery is a beautiful spot and is well cared for.