Uncle Phil's photo album

When ancestry.com first came online, I searched first through my brickwall line, the Wenz family of NY, NJ, MA and Germany. I found a Philip Henry Wenz on a passenger list, but in 1937. The date of our first Philip’s crossing has yet to be determined, and he passed away in 1907. When I mentioned it to my Mom, she knew all about it. Her Uncle Phil, the first Philip’s grandson and third namesake, had served with the U.S. Army in World War I. In 1937, he was invited as part of the American Legion to visit France as guests of that nation.

When Phil’s only daughter Mary, my mother’s first cousin, passed away, my mother had the task of cleaning out the house. Well, the Wenzes have been known to be keepers, so there were many items of historical value that came to me, including telegrams from WWI, a ration book from WWII, and a large and old photo album with “France” on the cover. It seemed very fragile and very old, but looked fascinating, full of photographs of the journey and events. Almost every photograph had a caption, and the captions included names of his friends. I wanted to scan it, but I was afraid of what damage I would inflict on it if I either took it apart or tried to scan it without taking it apart.

But after conferring with some folks whom I consider experts in the field, I felt more confident about taking it apart to scan on a flatbed scanner. It took a couple of hours, and I had to be systematic about it, but I finished! Glad I could get it done. The quality wasn’t as good as I would have liked, but at least it’s in a format that can be shared with both family and hopefully, descendants of the other folks in the pictures.

"Welcome at Versailles by French War Veterans at the Gate of Honor"

As I waited for each photo to scan, which took a few seconds since I scanned them at a higher d.p.i, I looked at the next one. As I saw the photographs of the war cemeteries and thought about what would be coming in just two years, I felt such heartbreak. As a species, we certainly don’t learn our lessons.

"Lafayette Escadrille Monument dedicated to the Americans who were killed while serving in that unit of aviation. Under this edifice is a long curved chamber containing marble caskets in which are interred those killed while flying and fighting for France. A beautiful monument."

"American Cemetery 5 miles from Paris at Suresnes. Star of David grave marker."

"Meuse-Argonne Cemetery near Romagne, France. Most of those buried here gave their lives during the Meuse-Argonne offensive, the greatest battle in American history."

"The immense field of white crosses arranged in long regular rows on the sloping hillside is a sight once seen will never be forgotten."

"Cemetery in foreground contains 150,000 graves of French soldiers! Over one million men were killed in this section, all unidentified bones were placed in marble caskets now resting in this monument."

"Figure illustrating silence to be so close to a million relics of a million who died in needless warfare compels vocal silence but impels the heart wrung cry of God have mercy!"

"Marshal Petain decorating Dan Doherty with 'Legion of Honor' emblem."

"Grave of American Red Cross Nurse Grace Malloch, Ecrouves Cemetery." 

I don't know if he knew her, but she was from the Boston area.

"Slumming on Queen Mary. Wenz, Jackson, Goretsky"

"The Jacksons - Goretskys - Wenzes"

Lost - please find!

One of my favorite hobbies is to go into antique stores and look for old family photographs that I might be able to reconnect with family members. Over the years, I've had some wonderful experiences doing this. In the last year, I've been twice to visit our son while he's been stationed at MCAS New River in Jacksonville, North Carolina. It's adjacent to Camp LeJeune. The next block over from his lodgings is one of the biggest antique stores I've ever been to, filled with "booths" full of new stuff, old stuff, junk and treasures. My favorite spot was the end table with the clear glass top and sides filled with old letters, post cards and a few photographs. After buying a few affordable ones, I brought them home and tried some of my favorite sites to find descendants who might be interested in the items. Well, I haven't so far, so I thought I'd share them here and tag them in hopes that someone searching for them might find them. They are a variety of correspondence, from postcards, graduation invitations, V-mail and love letters. The names and places are: Aileen Armstong, Oakland IA, L.J. McDermott, Winterport ME, C.E. Sanborn, Boston, Jones Baker, Taneytown MD, John M. Fuss, Emmitsburg MD, H.E. Schmidt, Pearl Harbor, Raymond M Baker, NYC, Jane Sawyer, Louisville KY, Garnett Divine, Mary Lou Wathen, Hillsdale MI, Charles Pearson, Alice Campbell, Finleyville PA, Russell Campbell, Craig Melville, Meadville PA, Glenn W. Melville, San Francisco, Joseph C. Page, Warsaw NC,  If you are related and interested an item, please contact me at mskeillor@gmail.com So here they are:

A Case Study in Bureaucracy

The year was 1976. I was freshly graduated from high school and ready to become a wage earner. But first, I had to have a Social Security account. Easy, right? But wait! I had been born overseas as an Army brat, and more significantly, not on a base hospital. My dad was with the ASA and stationed at an old Luftwaffe base in Rothwesten, Germany. So my officially-stamped birth certificate reads “Geburstekunde.”

I did have the consular report of my birth (both of my parents were American citizens, so I could have been born on the moon – I was still an American citizen.) but it was a Xeroxed copy and not the original, so it was not accepted. We need your green card, they kept mailing me.

At the same time this was going on, I was a fledgling genealogist. I had sent for and received my great-grandfather’s death record, having obtained his death date from his headstone. He was buried in the same town where I grew up, in the same cemetery where my grandparents were buried, and now, where my dad is buried – three generations in the same cemetery!

My great-grandfather’s name? John Joseph Smith! His death record revealed little I didn’t know, having grown up around most of his ten children and hearing lots of tales of the family. However, there was one detail that stood out to me: he had a Social Security number! At that moment, I had an epiphany. If I had to jump through so many hoops to get an account, what did an Irish immigrant have to do?

I contacted my local SS Administration office – which just happened to be the same one he would have applied to. Fortunately, this was in the days before they realized that genealogists were cash cows, so I got a copy of the application he filled out without having to sell my soul.

Although this document didn’t yield a lot more information than I already had (yes, when I get to the other side, he and I are going to have a conversation!) it did contain two more important tidbits: his exact birth date and his mother’s maiden name, although badly misspelled.

John and Kate (Beggins) Smith had ten children, six of them girls, known as “The Aunts.” Fast forward several years to a funeral of one of The Aunts. The youngest, Aunt Agnes, handed my dad a half-sheet of paper and suggested I might be able to use it in my research. Now we have more significant detail: His county of birth in Ireland and the year he was admitted into citizenship. 

This made it possible to shepherd out his naturalization record from the gazillions of other John Smiths from Ireland who sought citizenship.

Fast forward a few more years to familysearch.org, where the data from a massive indexing project is being uploaded. The Smith headstone I had located at the Calvary Cemetery in Brockton that gave me the information on John’s three sisters, including Bridget (see “Dusting Off Memories,” 12 February 2017) finally paid off in a major way: the indexing program of the LDS Family History Library had just begun to upload large amounts of data from the work. Included? Bridget, the daughter of Pat Smith and Catherine Guickan, born in Ballinamore, Leitrim, Ireland. 

Had I not had that maiden name from John’s Social Security application and Bridget’s information from her headstone, the information would have been meaningless – just another Smith! But now I have a town/parish in Ireland in which to concentrate my search for the elusive Smith.

Dusting Off Memories

Ask our kids how many times a family vacation included a trip to at least one cemetery. One such trip took place long before the digital age, probably in the mid-1980s.

My great-grandmother’s sister Rose married John Ordway, so I was searching for her burial place to verify her husband’s information. I checked first with the local Catholic church to find out where the plot was, but they had had a fire that destroyed their records since the time the Ordways were buried. I knew from my dad that the Ordways were buried in Calvary Cemetery in Brockton, Massachusetts.  If you’ve ever been to New England, you know that some of the Catholic cemeteries can go on for blocks! So we just “pressed forward” and decided to take a quick drive around the perimeter just to see what we could see. Amazingly, we found it in just a few minutes!

With yellow legal pad in hand, I walked over to the stone and began recording the information while the hubs and the kids got some wiggles out. As I was writing, something caught my attention a few rows up and over from where I was standing. The headstone I was looking at said “Smith.” I paid no attention, because I knew exactly where John, Kate and most of their ten children were buried, and it was not at Calvary and not in Brockton. Again, I felt something catch my attention and again, I ignored it. If I started recording every Smith headstone, I’d probably still be in that cemetery, thirty years later! A third time, the stone somehow called to me. I heard no voice, felt no hands on my head, yet I could not avoid looking at that Smith headstone. Finally, with some degree of resignation, I walked over to the stone and wrote down the information.

In the plot were Catherine, Mary, and Bridget Smith and Margaret Dunn. I had no idea who they were. But when I mentioned the names to my dad, he knew immediately who they were – Catherine was John Smith’s mother and the three other women were his sisters. Catherine died in 1905 and the last of the sisters died in 1949, hence the reason my dad had never given them a thought in all the years I had been researching – he would have been fifteen when she died. But my mention of those names “dusted off” his memory.

I had no idea his mother and sisters ever came to the U.S.! Good thing I followed the impression to go over and record that Smith headstone.

They Want to be Found!

Recently a set of circumstances has given me more time than usual to spend searching for ancestors. (Yay me!) I have had to marvel at how the information began to roll in as I dug a little deeper, and also just because I had done something.

The first example was being contacted by a cousin on my husband Howard’s side; the surname is Wressell, from Yorkshire, England. I thought that we had the research pretty well wrapped up on that line – but can we ever say that? When Carol contacted me, I ran the name through newspapers.com to see if I could help her with her part of the family. Quite by accident (not really), I found an article on Percy Wressell, who had fought with Canadian troops during WWI and been killed. 

The Winnipeg, Canada Tribune, 16 June 1917

Of course, that meant I had to determine where he fits in the family, and that research led to finding his mother, Mary Jane, as well as four siblings. The deeper I dug, the sadder the story became. Every record that listed an occupation for her was either as “servant” or “domestic.” You don’t need to have watched every season of “Downton Abbey” to know that female servants were not only the lowest rung of the social ladder in late 19^th century England but also the most vulnerable.

The 1871 Northowram, Yorkshire, English Census

 In all of the vital, church and census records I found for Mary Jane or her five children, I found no reference to a husband/father; in fact, I located two baptismal records for two of the children where the space for the father’s name had a line through it and under the children’s names was written “privately baptized.”

West Yorkshire Church of England Baptismal record, 1879

 I found the eldest child, Walter, on a list of “Lunacy Patients Register” at age 17, and then a later record of his death in the same institution in 1913 at age 41. 

UK "Lunacy Patients Admissions Records," 1879

Mary Jane's daughter Amy died before she was two years of age. Mary Jane died, as listed in the “Nonconformist” records, at age 47 in 1892.

The website newspapers.com can be a great tool for researching ancestors, but it is a bit tricky, as it relies on the computer’s ability to read old newsprint. Further, if you have a name that is very common or is a noun in everyday use, there may be just too many hits to be able to narrow down. But another of Howard’s surnames is McTaggart, which is a much simpler name for which to search. In a typical migration pattern, the McTaggarts came from the British Isles to Canada and some filtered down into Michigan, where one of them, Louisa, married my Howard’s great-grandfather’s brother. The search for McTaggarts in newspapers.com revealed a notice in the Port Huron (MI) Times Herald that “A message received by Mr. and Mrs. David McTaggart Thursday evening told of the sad news of the death of Captain Harold Ross, killed in action…” 

Of course, I couldn’t just note that fact down and go on my way. It turns out that Captain Ross was the only child of Harold and Nellie Ross, and that Nellie Ross and Florence McTaggart were sisters from the Peter and Agnes (McCorkendale) Wright family of Ontario. Normally an officer is pretty easy to locate in one of several family history sites, but somehow, Capt. Ross has slipped through the cracks and it seems to be up to me to make sure he is not forgotten.

Another name easy to search is one from my side of the family: Alberghini. A broad search revealed that one of my Alberghinis from Renazzo, Italy married an Irish girl from Boston, Mae Nugent. She had seven siblings, including a little brother who died when he was only four years old.

Finally, the saddest story of all comes from my mother’s husband’s family, the Wheelers. His was a fairly prominent family in Newport, RI and one of the branches of the family was the Knowe family. The headline from 1943 read: Janet, Susan Knowe drown in Maryland.” According to the news article, the two girls, 8-and 4-years old were “wading on a sandbar while the mother was on the shore tending her 10-months-old baby.”

It is difficult to imagine the enormity of the pain suffered through so much sadness. I was contemplating this recently while attending our local LDS (Mormon) Atlanta Temple. As I pondered, I felt as if my spiritual eyes were opened, and I felt as never before the infinite depth and breadth of the Atonement of Jesus Christ and His healing power – and not just in this life, but for families throughout all eternity.

I will keep searching and finding them.