Halloween Memories (October 31, 2013)

Halloween 1988

Halloween 1989

The only thing that is better than our memories of our own childhood holidays (such as Halloween), is a holiday as seen through the eyes -- and costumes -- of our children. With that in mind, here are some great visual memories we have of our sons on Halloweens too far past. The Crayons are from 1988 and Robin Hood & The Dragon are from 1989.

Molly always made the boys' costumes and did a wonderful job of it each year!

A Happy and Safe Halloween to all!
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Photographs from Molly's diligently collected and constructed family photo albums.
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Copyright 2013, John D. Tew
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Wordless Wednesday (October 30, 2013) -- Helen Raeder Cooke Roberts

Helen Raeder (Cooke) Roberts (1892 - 1987) was the older sister of my maternal grandmother, Ruth Eaton (Cooke) Carpenter

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Photograph from the collection of the author.

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Copyright 2013, John D. Tew

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Samaritan Sunday (October 27, 2013)

[If you should choose to adopt this prompt to contribute your own stories of folks who have gone out of their way to lend genealogy-related assistance to others, I would greatly appreciate a mention to Filiopietism Prism whenever you do so.  Thank you!  And please do use the same photograph below to illustrate the prompt.  ;-) ]

On December 1, 1888, Maria Erstad and Andrew C. Yivisaker were married in Minneola, Goodhue County, Minnesota.  One of their wedding gifts was a silver tea set consisting of a covered sugar bowl, a cream pitcher, and a "spooner," which is a container designed for holding teaspoons.  The sugar bowl in the set was etched with "A & M Yivisaker" and under the handle the date "Dec. 1st, 1888" was engraved.

Fast forward to 2013 and an antique store in Texas and a woman named C. Pennington.  This Good Samaritan wound up spotting the antique silver tea set in the store in Texas and she purchased it immediately after she noticed the etching and engraving.  Ms Pennington had once received a family farm picture from someone who had traced the family to whom the the farm once belonged and located her.  The stranger had done that just to gift a bit of family history to someone for whom it would have great meaning.  Ms Pennington hoped she could pay that kindness forward by doing something similar for someone else.  The tea set appeared to be her chance and she pounced on it.  

How the Yivisaker tea set found its way to Texas and into an antique store is not known, but you can read about how the kind efforts of Good Samaritan C. Pennington paid forward her debt of gratitude for the family farm photograph given to her by a kind soul who also knew the value of genealogical artifacts.  You can see a photograph of the tea set and learn the full story of how the tea set found its way back to Zumbrota, Minnesota by going here.  

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Photograph of the The Good Samaritan sculpture by Francois-Leon Sicard (1862 - 1934).  The sculpture is located in the Tuileries Gardens in Paris, France.  The photograph is by Marie-Lan Nguyen and has been placed in the public domain by her. See, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Good_Samaritan_Sicard_Tuileries.jpg

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Copyright 2013, John D. Tew

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Saturday Serendipity (October 26, 2013)

Saturdays often allow a more leisurely approach to life than work days. I can more easily post links to some blog posts or other materials I have discovered during the week, or even to those discovered during a Saturday morning coffee and extended surfing of the blogosphere/internet.

Here are a few recommendations for inclusion on your reading list.

1.  Today is the 139th anniversary of the birth of Abby Greene Aldrich in Providence, Rhode Island.  Abby became the first wife of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and the mother of all his children (one daughter and the "Five Brothers").  She was the second of the four daughters of Nelson Wilmarth Aldrich and his wife, Abby Pearce Chapman, and she was the fourth of their eleven children.  Abby led a fascinating life and was what author Bernice Kert calls, "a woman of significance."  Abby was the mother of two Governors, a Vice President of the United States, one of the most powerful bankers in the world in addition to children who exerted enormous influence in the fields of art, education and the environment.  She herself was a moving force behind the preservation and restoration of Colonial Willamsburg and a founder of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.  To find out more about this woman of significance, I highly recommend the biography Abby Aldrich Rockefeller: The Woman in the Family (New York, New York: Random House 1993) by Bernice Kert.

2.   As we all know, not all stories that are uncovered by genealogy research are heartwarming and uplifting, but they are nonetheless part of one's family history.  Here is a story of how a granddaughter discovered the real story behind the grandfather who abandoned his wife and two young sons.  The grandmother never remarried and never spoke an ill word about her husband, saying they had "a community of spirit." Well, perhaps it is a good thing Grandma never knew . . .       

3.  No less an authority than the National Library of Ireland offers expert tips on how to preserve family  documents here -- complete with photos  

4.   So what is "Pedigree Collapse?"  No, it is not a condition to look up in your Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy to find out if you are suffering from it or not and how to treat it.  Diane Boumenot at One Rhode Island Family explains it all.  

5.  Here is a VERY interesting item -- the most popular names given to girls state-by-state for the last 52 years as based on data from the Social Security Administration!  This is for baby girls born between 1960 and 2012.    

6.  I found this one at UpFront with NGS fascinating . . . using ground penetrating radar to locate unmarked graves (complete with photos) here.

7.  Jana Last at Jana's Genealogy and Family History Blog  shares the DNA confirmation of her Mayan ancestry and it appears that although the percentage of such ancestry is small, it is the most reliable of her ancestry results.  Jana provides a map, pie chart, and a photo of the lovely lady who gave the gift of Native American ancestry.

8.  A Family Archivist Survival Kit?  Yup, there is such a thing and Janine Adams at Organize Your Family History provides an explanation and a link.  [I have NO connection whatsoever to the kit provider.]  

9.  And then there is the nice example of mining a death certificate for nuggets of information and leads by Nancy at My Ancestors and Me. 

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Photograph of Abby Greene Aldrich from the author's copy of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller: The Woman in the Family (New York, New York: Random House 1993) by Bernice Kert.
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Copyright 2013, John D. Tew

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Friday Fotos (October 25, 2013) -- Abby Greene Aldrich of Providence, Rhode, Island

Abby Greene Aldrich, age 6.

Abby Greene Aldrich circa 1890.

Abby Greens Aldrich as a debutante in October 1893

Abby and her husband John D. Rockefeller, Jr. in 1911

See item #1 in tomorrow's Saturday Serendipity for why Friday Fotos is devoted to Abby Greene Aldrich.

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All photos from the blog author's copy of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller: The Woman in the Family (New York, New York: Random House 1993) by Bernice Kert.

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Genealogy, Genealogists, Science & Healthcare . . . Oh My! (October 24, 2013)

Typhoid Death Rates 1890, 1906 and 1918.  [Cartoon by Zim, 1919]

Amid all the current controversy swirling around healthcare availability, coverage, and affordability in the U.S. -- and the political debate that can often can come down to views about whether or not basic, continuous healthcare is a right or a privilege -- what perspective, if any, can genealogists bring to the table?

Those of us who have delved into our family histories here in the U.S. very quickly come to the realization that our ancestors lived in very different worlds than we do; but it is not until we stumble across the very common instances of childhood deaths and disabilities in our family histories that we come face-to-face with the shocking realization that living beyond childhood was not something to be taken for granted by our ancestors -- and I'm not talking about ancestors in the time of the Great Migration or earlier.  

A few examples will serve to starkly illustrate what I mean . . .

This week Laura Mattingly of The Old Trunk in the Attic posted about the family of her great grandfather's brother, William B. Mann.  William was married twice, but he and his first wife, Nancy Clemie, had 11 children together before she died at age 55 in 1894.  Of the 11 children Nancy and William had together, five of them (born between roughly 1864 and 1870) died in infancy or childhood. The exact causes of death are not stated, but almost certainly included one or more infectious diseases.

Abby Greene Aldrich was born on October 26, 1874 in Providence, Rhode Island.  She was one of the 11 children of Abby Pearce Chapman and Nelson W. Aldrich, the future powerful U.S. Senator from Rhode Island.  Abby Greene Aldrich grew up in a privileged and affluent home.  She later married John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and together they had six children born between 1903 and 1915.  Of the 11 children born to Abby Greene's parents between 1867 and 1888, three of them died before age four.  In addition, two of the surviving children were seriously disabled by infectious diseases. One became completely deaf and the other was hearing impaired -- both for the rest of their lives. 

My maternal grandmother was born in 1897.  She was the fourth of the six children of Walter W. Cooke and his wife Leonette Flagg who were all born between 1892 and 1902.  My grandmother was one of only three children to survive beyond age six.

My paternal grandfather was born in 1896 and was one of the five children of John Andrew Tew and his wife Margaret Conner who were all born between 1885 and 1901.  Only my grandfather and his older sister survived beyond age two.  

Reliable childhood mortality statistics did not begin in the U.S. until roughly the turn of the last century.  Before 1900, death rate data was crude and so rates have been estimated from decennial census figures.  Using census estimates and then later mortality data, it has been estimated that the overall death rate in the 1850s in the U.S. was about 22 per 1,000 persons.  By 1900 the rate had fallen to about 18 per 1,000 and by 1940 the rate stood at 11 per 1,000 -- half what is was 90 years earlier.  

In 2003, the mortality rate in the U.S. for children under age five was 8 per 1,000 live births, but this still placed the U.S. higher in child mortality rates than the UK and Canada (6 per 1,000), Germany (5 per 1,000), Spain (4 per 1,000), Norway (4 per 1,000), Sweden (3 per 1,000) and France, Iceland, Portugal, Italy, Australia, Japan, Austria, and many other countries including Croatia!

Hard as it is for us to understand today, the predominant belief about the cause of infectious diseases prior to the 1870s was the "miasma theory."  This medical belief was that disease was caused by poisonous vapors or "miasmas" that were foul and smelled offensive.  It was generally believed  that a variety of illnesses were caused by the poisons in these noxious vapors being inhaled.  Before the 1870s and the development of theories about the biological bases for infections, resources were squandered on disease prevention approaches involving ventilation systems and ineffective quarantine programs.  And once bacteriologic science took off after the 1870s understanding of the exact routes of various infectious diseases was still slow to replace miasma theory and other non-scientific explanations for disease and non-accidental causes of death.

Part of the problem for attacking infectious diseases in the United States in the late 19th Century was captured by John M. Barry in his detailed book on the 1918 Flu pandemic, The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History.  Barry summarized on p. 32 . . .

               [B]y the 1870s, European medical schools required and gave rigorous scientific
               training and were generally subsidized by the state. In contract, most American
               medical schools were owned by a faculty whose profits and salaries -- even when
               they did not own the school -- were paid by student fees, so the schools often had
               no admission standards other than the ability to pay tuition. No medical school in
               America allowed medical students to routinely either perform autopsies or see
               patients, and medical education often consisted of nothing more than two four-
               month terms of lectures. Few medical schools had any association with a
               university, and fewer still had ties to a hospital. In 1870 even a Harvard medical
               student could fail four of nine courses and sill get an M.D.  

The advent of a science-based approach to medicine had dramatic results as measured by dropping death rates and increasing life expectancy.  The cartoon depiction above of the effect on typhoid deaths is a good example.  Once science was able to demonstrate that typhoid was caused by the Salmonella bacterium and that the major pathway to infection was the ingestion of food or water contaminated by the feces of an infected person, then effective preventative measures were obvious and implementation of sanitation practices, water filtration, and chlorination led to dramatic decreases in the incidence and death rates associated with that awful disease.  In less than 30 years the typhoid death rate dropped from 80 to 100 per 100,000 to 7 per 100,000.  Many equally or more dramatic results with other diseases came with the development of the so-called "miracle drugs" (penicillin, streptomycin and others)  that scientific medicine discovered in the early decades of the 20th Century.  From 1900 to 1940, mortality rates in the U.S. fell by 40% with an average decline of about 1% per year during that period.  Life expectancy at birth during that same period rose from age 47 to age 63.  

As genealogical illustrations of the effects of this amazing leap in scientific medicine and disease prevention and treatment, we can look at subsequent generations in the family examples summarized above.  Two generations of even a very privileged and affluent family such as the Aldrich/Rockefellers can illustrate the point.  The generation of the children of Nelson and Abby Pearce Aldrich born in the late 1860s - 1880s suffered three disease-related deaths before age four and two who lived to adulthood, but with severe disease-caused hearing disabilities.  One generation later when Abby Greene Aldrich Rockefeller had six children of her own, all born between 1903 and 1915, all six lived to adulthood and into their 70s - 90s (except for one son who died at 61).

In my own family, my maternal grandmother's parents lost half of their six children born between 1892 and 1902 to disease.  My grandmother herself had three children born between 1927 and 1932.  All of them lived to adulthood and two are still alive and well in their 80s.  Her one son, my uncle, died just a few weeks before his 75th birthday.  My paternal grandfather's parents lost three of their five children to disease before age two, but my grandfather's three children all survived and today are ages 91, 87 and 80.         

So we, as genealogists, can help remind folks that we can achieve -- and have in the past achieved -- stunning advances in medicine, disease prevention and treatment, and in the provision of general healthcare in order to make the lives of all of our families more safe, secure and long lasting (no matter whether we are poor, middle class or rich).  We only need the determination to do it and the memory to heed the lessons of the past. 

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For more regarding the information referenced above see . . . 

Bernice Kert, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller: The Woman in the Family (New York, New York: Random House 1993).

David Cutler and Grant Miller, The Role of Public Health Improvements in Health Advances: The 20th Century United States (http://scholar.harvard.edu/cutler/files/cutler_miller_cities.pdf , February 2004).

John M. Barry, The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History (New York, New York: Viking Penguin 2004).

2011 Book of the Year, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Comparative National Statistics, pp. 742-743 "World and regional summaries," and pp. 810 - 815 "Health services."
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Copyright 2013, John D. Tew
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Caleb Everett Freeman (1862 - 1904)

Caleb Everett Freeman was born in Rhode Island in July 1862.  He was the son of Mason Freeman (1820 - 1898) and his wife Martha Amanda Freeman nee, Shearman (1830 - 1870). Caleb was a brother of my great grandmother, Sarah Etta (Freeman) Carpenter, and so Caleb is my great grand uncle.

Caleb E. Freeman was a bookkeeper.  He and his wife Carrie had four children before Caleb died rather young on August 3, 1904 at age 42.  Their children were:

     1.  Mason Freeman born in November 1888.

     2.  Gladys R. Freeman born in September 1889.

     3.  Elsie Freeman born in October 1892.

     4.  Arnold R. Freeman born in 1903.

My maternal grandfather, Everett Shearman Carpenter (son of Samuel Eber Carpenter and Sarah Etta Freeman), got his first name from the middle name of his Uncle Caleb and his middle name from his maternal grandmother Martha Amanda (Shearman) Freeman's  maiden surname.

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Photograph in the collection of the author.

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Copyright 2013, John D. Tew

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Military Monday (October 21, 2013) -- A Prelude to the Dorr Rebellion? Part II

Militia muster Order to Eber Miller for September 28, 1840

Following up on a previous post here about my 3rd great grandfather, Eber Miller, being ordered to muster with the Rhode Island militia in 1840, this week I post a scanned image of the original 1840 Order for September 28, 1840, which is also in my collection of family artifacts.

The Order depicted above follows a September 7, 1840 Order for Eber to muster on September 16, 1840.  This second Order differs in format -- being a handwritten Order on a "fill in the blank" form, whereas the earlier Order was a completely printed form with only Eber's full name supplied via handwriting.  The "Warning Officer" is the same Aaron F. Tucker on both Orders.  The "Commandant" on both Orders is also the same Henry J. Morris, but in the first Order Mr. Morris is stated to be "Ensign and Commandant," whereas in the second Order he appears to now be Captain.  The name of CAPT Daniel C. Mowry, who ordered the earlier muster, is absent from this second Order.  

Curiously, this second Order also states a fine amount of $7 and 00 Cts., whereas no fine amount was stated in the first Order.  It is not clear if the fine -- being in brackets -- is stating the amount of a fine for failure to show, OR if, perhaps, it is stating a fine amount for Eber's failure to show at the muster twelve days earlier.

The above Order reads as follows . . .

Mr. Eber Miller 

       SIR -- You are hereby required to appear at the in [sic] of Davis

Cook 2 in Cumberland

on 28th day of Sept at 8 o'clock A M., armed and

equipped as the law directs, for martial exercise and inspection, and there await

further orders.

                                   By order of the Commandant Henry J. Morris captain

[Fine, $ 7 00 Cts.]             Aaron F. Tucker  Warning Officer. 

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The scanned image of the September 28, 1840 muster Order is from the original in the collection of the author.

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Copyright 2013, John D. Tew

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Samaritan Sunday (October 20, 2013)

[If you should choose to adopt this prompt to contribute your own stories of folks who have gone out of their way to lend genealogy-related assistance to others, I would greatly appreciate a mention to Filiopietism Prism whenever you do so.  Thank you!  And please do use the same photograph below to illustrate the prompt.  ;-) ]

On rare occasions there is a story that I think is so intriguing, heartwarming, or instructive that it bears a second mention here on The Prism.  The following is one of those stories.  In case you missed the recommendation in yesterday's Saturday Serendipity about the rapidly evolving genealogy tool of DNA testing, learn some of the background story below.  You can then get the full story -- with video and photographs -- at the link!  

Patrick "PJ" Holland is approaching 81 years old and is now in an assisted living facility in Plano, Texas so that he can be near the only "family" he has ever known.  And what a remarkable family it is!  

Patrick Holland was born to a young, unwed mother in a hospital near Cincinnati, Ohio during the Great Depression.  He actually lived in the hospital for the first couple of years of his life because all the orphanages were full during that crushing time.  The hospital nurses took care of him until an orphanage had room to take him, but the orphanage was a painful place and so PJ ran away and hid in a convent for a time.  When he reached age 16, he lied about his age and joined the Army -- where he became a paratrooper. When his time in the Army came to an end he returned to Cincinnati because he really had no place else to go.  That was when a local family took PJ into their home and he simply became one of them over time.  He became "Uncle PJ."

Marilyn Souders' grandmother was the woman who took Patrick Holland into her home more than six decades ago.  Patrick was always "Uncle PJ" to Marilyn, but she knew he had some other family somewhere -- some biological family that he had never known or met.  Marilyn decided she was going to do her utmost to find her Uncle PJ's family for him and she set out on decades of searching and researching that even had her family combing libraries on vacations until they were able to finally come up with a name for Patrick.  Marilyn could tell her Uncle PJ that his mother's name was "Agnes Holland," but nothing more was ever found despite "thousands and thousands" of hours searching everywhere Marilyn and her family could think of.

And then recently (as we all heard on the news), the actress Angelina Jolie had genetic testing done that revealed her significant risk for breast cancer.  A 31-year-old aspiring New York actress named Cathryn Mudon and a friend heard about Angelina Jolie's experience and they decided to have their DNA tested too.  Well, one of the unproductive avenues of research Marilyn and her Uncle PJ had explored was a test of his DNA -- and it turned out Patrick Holland and Cathryn Mudon used the exact same DNA testing service.  One day recently, Marilyn Souders logged on to her computer and suddenly Patrick's DNA test results were matched at a first cousin level!

To learn the full story and to watch a moving 4-minute video that will introduce you to Uncle PJ and the Good Samaritan who doggedly searched for her "Uncle PJ's" background, go here.  It is well worth a few minutes of your time!  

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Photograph of the The Good Samaritan sculpture by Francois-Leon Sicard (1862 - 1934).  The sculpture is located in the Tuileries Gardens in Paris, France.  The photograph is by Marie-Lan Nguyen and has been placed in the public domain by her. See, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Good_Samaritan_Sicard_Tuileries.jpg

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Copyright 2013, John D. Tew

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Saturday Serendipity (October 19, 2013)

Saturdays often allow a more leisurely approach to life than work days. I can more easily post links to some blog posts or other materials I have discovered during the week, or even to those discovered during a Saturday morning coffee and extended surfing of the blogosphere/internet.

Here are a few recommendations for inclusion on your reading list.

1.  Never assume you've looked everywhere.  Harold Henderson of Midwestern Microhistory blog looks at minutes of the La Porte County, Indiana commissioners and finds records of the burial of named paupers who would otherwise be unknown.

2.   Midge Frazel at Granite in My Blood walks us through using an iPad to give presentations to groups (complete with photo illustrations).

3.  'Tis the season . . .  Bill West's fourth and fifth installments in his Halloween Tales mini-series are about Peter Rugg, the "Stormbreeder" and the shrinking of Nix's Mate Island in Boston harbor.

4.  Churches and libraries, gardens and more . . . oh my.  I have said it before, but it bears mentioning again.  If you can't get back to visit New England as much as you would like -- or if you have never been to New England because you are too far away and are not sure you can swing the trip -- then you really should visit Barbara Poole's blog Life From The Roots and feast on the visual
treats she has posted of old New England churches, wonderful libraries, gardens, memorials and
more. It's the next best thing to being there!

5.  And speaking of New England, I just learned a lesson related to Harold Henderson's admonition to never assume you've looked everywhere (see item #1 above).  One must also never blindly assume that a geographical name refers to a single location no matter how specific and particular you think a designation is.  We all know that England is the source for many town and county names in the U.S. and that we need to be careful about locating and designating the correct one.  For example, do you mean Providence, Rhode Island or Providence, Utah?  Better yet, do you mean Boston, Massachusetts; Boston, Ontario; Boston, Belize; Boston, County Clare, Ireland; Boston, Lincolnshire, England; Boston, Alabama; Boston, New York; or even Boston, Kyrgyzstan?  Well we all know what we are talking about if we simply designate "New England," right?  We mean the six states of ME, NH, VT, MA, RI and CT in the U.S. -- duh!  Not so fast . . . have a look here!  ;-)   

6.  For both a heart-wrenching and a heartwarming story about how DNA is indeed changing the genealogy world and the lives of people searching for family connections, read this story recommended by The Weekly Genealogist newsletter from NEHGS.  Patrick "PJ" Holland is going on 81 and he never knew where he came from or that he had a cousin until . . .   

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Copyright 2013, John D. Tew

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