Where's Grandpa?

My grandfather wearing his Shriner's fez,
whose whereabouts are also unknown.

Today, April 6, was my paternal grandfather's birthday.

Bertram Lynn Sellers, Sr. was born April 6, 1903 in Mount Holly, Burlington County, New Jersey.  He died January 23, 1995 in Niceville, Okaloosa County, Florida.

When I thought, "Where's Grandpa?", the first thing that came to my mind was the humorous link on Steve Morse's One-Step Website.  But that's actually looking for your great-grandfather.

What I'm really thinking about when I ask that question, though, is where is what's left of my grandfather.

I know from my grandfather's death certificate that he was cremated.  So what's left of him are the cremains.

But I don't know where they are.

When Grandpa died, he was married to his third wife, Adelle Cordelia Taylor.  She was the only person he was married to during my life; they married the year before I was born.  Adelle was a very quiet woman, and Grandpa pretty much controlled her life.

About a year or two before he died, Grandpa had a stroke.  Adelle couldn't care for him, because she was about 80 years old at the time.  So Grandpa was moved to a rehabilitation facility in town.  Adelle didn't drive, so she could only visit when someone took her there, which wasn't often.  She was left sitting at home most of the time.  I'm sure she went to church quite a bit, because it was just across the street, but I don't think she did much else.  Her niece visited Grandpa every day and helped with his physical therapy.  She may have been living in the house with Adelle during this time.

But then Grandpa died.

My Aunt Carol, Grandpa's youngest child, asked me one day if I could find out what happened to her father's cremains.  So I started trying to figure it out.

The death certificate doesn't state who received the cremains, only which company handled the cremation.  I started there.

And learned that the facility that handled Grandpa's cremation no longer exists.  I found the name of the company that bought its business, but the new company didn't get (maybe didn't bother to get?) all of the records from the old company (or at least that's what they told me).  So they couldn't tell me what happened to Grandpa's cremains.

And the trail stopped there.

I'm thinking, "Aren't there laws about this?  Doesn't someone have to keep track of where these things go?"

But it was several years after the fact that I started looking for this information, and by that time Grandpa was already lost.

My best guess is that Adelle probably received the cremains.  After settling Grandpa's estate, she moved about 20 miles north of Niceville to Crestview, to live with her nephew.  I know that she brought a bunch of Grandpa's papers and photos with her, because another aunt was given those several years later (see the next paragraph).  So it's a reasonable guess that she brought the cremains with her also.

A little more than five years after Grandpa died, Adelle passed away in Crestview, on May 25, 2000.  And a few years after that, Adelle's nephew contacted my Aunt Dottie to give her all of my grandfather's papers that Adelle had kept.  If he had the cremains, one would think he would have offered to give those also.  But if they weren't in an urn and were just in a plain box, maybe no one realized what they were and they were tossed out (which is why I need to label the little urn that has some of my father's cremains in it, so it doesn't suffer that fate).

I am still very disappointed that I couldn't answer the question "Where's Grandpa?" and return his cremains to my aunt.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Ellen's Questions, Part 2

For this week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun with Randy Seaver, we're picking up right where we left off last week:

Here is your assignment, if you choose to play along (cue the Mission:  Impossible! music, please!):

(1) Ellen Thompson-Jennings posted 20 questions on her blog — see Even More Questions about Your Ancestors and Maybe a Few about You (posted 27 June). 

(2) We will do these five at a time, with Questions 6 to 10 tonight (we did 1 through 5 last week).

(3) Tell us about it in your own blog post, in a comment on this post, or in a Facebook post.

Okay, here are my answers.

6.  How many DNA companies have you tested with or transferred to?  Have you tested at all the five major companies?

I have tested my autosomal DNA with AncestryDNA, Family Tree DNA, 23andMe, and Genes for Good.  I have a LivingDNA kit that I have not yet mailed in, and I think I have another test from someone else that I haven't completed yet.  I have transferred my autosomal results to GEDMatch and MyHeritage.  I have also done mtDNA testing with Family Tree DNA.

7.  Do you have an ancestor who had a successful business?  Is it still in business?

The longest-lasting business and the one that was most recently active (that I know of) was my paternal grandfather's stamp, coin, and rubber stamp shop in Niceville, Florida.  It was called Sellers Stamp Shop.  He started it decades ago, and it was there when my family moved to Niceville in 1973.  My first job was working for my grandfather in the shop.  I think it was still operating when Grampa passed away in January 1995.  It is no longer in business, however; the shop died with him.

8.  How long ago was your last “genealogy/DNA happy dance?”

I think my last genealogy happy dance was about two years ago in 2017, when I connected with a second cousin on my paternal grandmother's side who was able to fill in lots of information I didn't have about one of my grandmother's sisters.  I'm still waiting for her to write back to me again, though . . . .

9.  Did you ever discover that a friend was also a distant cousin?

If you count **really** distant, yes.  I have found that a few of my Jewish genealogy friends show up as my cousins on FTDNA, but they're all listed as distant, and because of endogamy the relationship is probably even further back than the listings suggest, so the odds of us actually being able to determine the specific relationship are Slim and None and Slim just left town.  And Tony Burroughs says that if you can't say what the exact relationship is, it just doesn't count.

10.  Do you have a genealogy brick wall?  Do you think you will be able to use DNA to work past it?

I have no genealogy brick walls. :)  That's because I define a brick wall as a question for which I have checked every available resource and still can't find the answer.  There isn't a single one of my research questions for which I have checked every resource, so none of those questions ia a brick wall yet.

As for the second half of this question, for research on my father's side, yes, there's a good possibility that DNA might be helpful in some instances.  On my mother's side, which is Jewish, not likely.

Saturday Day Night Genealogy Fun: Your Best Genealogy Day Ever

I've noticed recently that several of the Saturday Night Genealogy Fun topics appear to be annual themes.  Last year's request for "best genealogy day" was in October, however, not November.  But on to this week's request from Randy Seaver's:

Here is your assignment if you choose to play along (cue the Mission:  Impossible music, please!):

1) What was your very "Best Genealogy Day Ever?"  It might be the day you solved a thorny research problem, the day you spent at a repository and came away with more records than you could imagine, or the day you met a cousin or visited an ancestral home.

2)  Tell us in your own blog post, in a comment to this blog post, or in a Facebook or Google+ post.  Be sure to drop a comment to this post if you write your own blog post and link to it.

I've already written about two really great genealogy days (figuring out my great-great-grandmother's actual maiden name and meeting a lot of cousins from one family line), so I had to think about another good one.  I have settled on the day on which serendipity played a part.

At some point I learned that my paternal grandfather's mother, Laura May (Armstrong) Sellers Ireland, had been living with him when she died, and I ordered her death certificate from the state of Florida.  The certificate told me that she was buried in the Valparaiso Cemetery, Valparaiso being essentially a "twin city" to Niceville, where I used to live.  Valparaiso also is not far from where my father has been living for several years now.  So I told my father that the next time I came to visit, we were going to find his grandmother's grave.

I think it was the summer of 1995 when I flew out.  My stepfather had agreed we would scatter my mother's ashes when my brother and I were both there, and my brother was going to be in the area for his high school 15-year reunion, so I made plans to be there also.  I reminded my father ahead of time we were going to the cemetery.

The day we went to look for the cemetery, my father decided we didn't need a map, because Valparaiso was so small it wasn't going to take us long to find it (ha!).  My stepmother came with us.  After driving around for an hour or so and finding absolutely nothing, my father finally listened to my suggestion to ask at the police department.  As I had suspected, they knew exactly where it was, and off we went again.

When we finally found the cemetery, it was a small, square, fenced-in plot.  A caretaker's building was off to the side, but no one was there.  The entrance gate was in the middle of one of the sides.  We had no idea where my great-grandmother's stone would be, so the three of us walked in and headed in three different directions.  My father went to one side, my stepmother to the other side, and I went straight ahead to the rear fence to start from there.

Just as I arrived at the far side, my father called out that we should probably be looking for a flat stone, because as we all knew, my grandfather was pretty tight with money and wouldn't have spent enough for a standing stone.  After we all laughed, I turned and looked down at the ground where I had stopped —and there she was!  And it was a flat stone, just as my father had predicted!

I thought it was nice that even though I never had the opportunity to meet my great-grandmother in life, I was able to find her tombstone and make a connection to her that way.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: What Were You Doing in 1995?

This week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun assignment from Randy Seaver is an update from one he did last year about this time, when he asked everyone what they were doing in 1985:

Here is your assignment if you choose to play along (cue the Mission:  Impossible music, please!):

(1) Do you recall what you were doing in 1995?  Family, school, work, hobbies, technology, genealogy, vacations, etc?

(2)  Tell us in a blog post of your own, in a comment on this blog, or in a Facebook or Google+ post.

At least we know why Randy can remember so much about what he did — he sent out a Christmas letter (which he obviously has a copy of)!  I don't think I'm going to do as well.

• In January of 1995 my mother, my grandfather, and an uncle passed away.  That pretty much shot the rest of the year for me.

• In April 1995 I turned 33.  I don't remember anything exciting happening for my birthday or any holidays that year.

• I was working for Chaosium, a small press publisher in Oakland, California.  I was an editor, I think on two fiction lines, along with being the company "convention schnook", which meant I handled the paperwork for our convention appearances and convention support.  I may have gone to one or two conventions myself for the company that year, but I had just started working there in October 1994, so that's the most I would have attended.  I think I went to GenCon on my own that summer, but I'm not sure.  I also did a lot of freelance editing for R. Talsorian Games.

• I was still working with a game convention in Southern California, so I must have traveled to Los Angeles over Presidents' Day weekend and Labor Day weekend for the four-day events.  I believe I also went to the Memorial Day weekend convention.

That's about all I remember.  I don't think I took any regular vacations, just my "working vacations."  It was not a great year.

20th Anniversary of a Devastating Month

In 1995 I rejected January as the beginning of the new year.  I announced that I was beginning my year with the Chinese new year, in February.  I did that because the month of January was so devastating that I didn't want to include it in my life at all.  In January 1995 I lost three members of my family.  While none of the deaths was unexpected, their quick succession was overwhelming, and much of the rest of the year disappeared into a fog.  I think I'm ready to bring that month back, by commemorating the lives of those relatives.

Myra, Lillyan, Sarah

My mother, Myra Roslyn Meckler Sellers Preuss, died on January 2, 1995, at the age of 54.  She was on her second go-round with colon cancer, and we had known from the time of that second diagnosis that she would probably not survive.  All three of us children went to Florida for Thanksgiving to see her, but my brother was the only one still there when she passed away.

My mother had such a huge effect on my interest in family history.  I've written about how she and my grandmother used to tell me family stories when I was just a little girl and shared several of those stories on Mother's Day in 2011, 2012, and 2013.  It's a pretty safe bet that I wouldn't have become a genealogist without my mother's influence.

Sidney, Al

My grand-uncle Alexander Gordon died on January 9, 1995, at the age of 77, just one week after his niece.  He had had a severe stroke many years before that and had been in surprisingly good condition, all things considered.  But his health had been worsening, and when I received the news that he had passed away, it again did not come as a shock.

I didn't get to see my Uncle Al often, as we lived on opposite sides of the country, but he was always friendly and welcoming to us.  I heard only good stories about him from my mother and grandmother (his sister).  He seemed to be a genuinely nice person every time I saw him, and he maintained a cheerful outlook on life.

Betty, Bert, Catherine

My paternal grandfather, Bertram Lynn Sellers, Sr., died on January 23, 1995, at the age of approximately 92 (I still haven't found documentation of his birth!), two weeks after my uncle.  His health had been very good even past the age of 80.  But around 1991 he had a bad stroke and lost a lot of memory.  His health began to deteriorate slowly but steadily shortly after that.  I was able to visit him on the same Thanksgiving trip when I saw my mother.  Unfortunately, he no longer recognized anyone except the young woman, a relative of his wife, who came to the care facility every day and helped him with his physical therapy.

My grandfather was a pretty impressive guy.  His family was not well off, and he lost a leg at the age of 13.  But he went on to have three marriages and another significant relationship, father seven children, and work as a civil engineer for the U.S. Army and U.S. Air Force.  His leg didn't slow him down; he even drove vehicles with stick shifts.  My first job, not counting babysitting, was working for him in his stamp shop.  I learned about stamps and coins, and also how to use hot lead to make rubber stamps.  I tell people that "old" doesn't start until 80 because that's when he began to slow down (a little).

Even now, twenty years later, it's difficult to think about how that January did a number on me.  But I'm glad I can share memories of my mother, uncle, and grandfather and celebrate their lives and the good memories I have of them.