Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Your Top Five Surprises

Anytime someone asks me to list my top number X of anything, I have to think about it for a while, as I did with this week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge from Randy Seaver.

Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission:  Impossible! music), is:

1.  Check out Top Five Surprises by D. M. Debacker on the Gathering Leaves blog.

2.  What are your top five surprises you have found in your genealogy research and family history work?

3.  Tell us about your surprises in a blog post of your own, in a comment to this blog post, or in a Facebook comment.

My surprises come from more than 50 years of research.

1.  My paternal grandfather, Bertram Lynn Sellers, was born out of wedlock and was not the biological son of the man my great-grandmother Laura May Armstrong married.  This revelation, which I later proved with Y-DNA, came to me when I suddenly began to wonder why, if my great-grandfather had loved his stepfather so much as to name a son after him, he would name his second son after him, while naming his first son after a "close family friend."
See "I'm Apparently a Sellers by Informal Adoption"

2.  I had been told that my maternal grandfather's brother Rubin Meckler had been born and had died very young in the Russian Empire, before my great-grandparents immigrated to the United States.  I was amazed to discover him in the 1915 New York Census and then find his birth and death dates in the New York City indices.
See "Surprising Discovery in the New York Census"

3.  My great-grandmother Jane Dunstan was six months pregnant when she married my great-grandfather Thomas Kirkland Gauntt in 1891.  She had immigrated here from England only a year before.
See "Two Truths and One Lie"

4.  My great-grandmother Laura May Armstrong had an out-of-wedlock child, Bertolet Grace Sellers, three years after her husband had died.  She declined to name the father on both Bertolet's birth certificate and death certificate (she died at 6 years old).
See "Could 'Bertram' and 'Bertolet' Be Named for the Same 'Bert'?"

5.  My grandfather, Bertram Lynn Sellers, was registered as a girl named Gertrude L. on his original birth certificate.  I still have no credible explanation as to why.
See "An Administrative Change of Sex"

Would It Have Been Three Generations of Illegitimate Births?

It occurred to me that we almost could have had three consecutive generations of illegitimate births in my family.

We start with my grandfather.  I have written previously about how my great-grandmother Laura, way back in 1903, had my grandfather without the benefit of marriage.  His original birth certificate had the socially disapproving "OW" ("out of wedlock") written on the line where the father's name would normally have been.  The form actually included instructions to write OW if the child was born out of wedlock.  I guess you weren't allowed to put the father's name under those circumstances.

Sure, my great-grandmother went back 37 years later and amended the birth certificate to include her (then deceased) first husband's name as the father, but I proved through Y-DNA testing that Cornelius Elmer Sellers was not my grandfather's biological father.  I'm very happy that Elmer was willing to marry Laura and accepted her 7-month-old son as his own.  Neither my grandfather nor any of his siblings had any idea, as far as I can tell.  But Grandpa was still born illegitimate.

Grandpa went on to marry in 1923, and he and his first wife, Elizabeth, had three children.  The first one, a little boy, died at just 20 months old, but my two aunts lived long lives, and I knew both of them.

In 1930, just after the start of the Great Depression, the four family members were enumerated in the census as living in four different places.  Grandpa was back at home, living with his mother.  The older of my aunts was living in that county in the county children's home.  The younger aunt was living with a relatively well off couple in a different county.  Elizabeth was living in that second county, working as a maid for a family.  My guess is that she moved to that county so one of the parents would be near their younger daughter.

According to the 1930 census, Grandpa was working as a textile weaver at the silk mill in town.  Coincidentally, my grandmother Anna was also working as a textile weaver at the silk mill in town.  My hypothesis is that the silk mill is where they met each other.

However they met, they got along well enough that my father was born in 1935.  And they stayed together for about 17 years or so, until my grandfather decided to run off with a young woman he had met working at the nearby U.S. Army post.

Maybe my grandfather had a reputation.  But that young woman told him that she wasn't going to do anything with him until he proved to her that he was a single man (at least, that's what she told me).  So in 1953, he got divorced — from Elizabeth, not from Anna.  Which meant that he had never been married to my grandmother.  Which then meant that my father was illegitimate.

Hey, now we have two generations!

Many, many years later, my father was married to his third wife.  One day she suddenly decided she wanted to convert to Catholicism.  We learned that part of the process for that was that she had to have her and my father's previous marriages annulled.

When my father's first wife, Mary Lou, heard about that, she was extremely upset.  After all, they had had a daughter together.  And Mary Lou believed that if the marriage was annulled, the daughter (my half-sister) would then be officially considered illegitimate.

My stepmother did not follow through on her conversion, so none of the marriages was annulled, and we didn't have to deal with Mary Lou stressing over my sister being declared illegitimate.

Recently, I learned that the marriage of my cousin's parents was officially annulled.  My cousin thought that had made her illegitimate, and she was still upset about that, even though it had occurred many years previously.

I researched the question, and discovered that in the Catholic church, if a marriage is annulled but was a valid marriage to begin with, the children are still considered to be legitimate.

So not only is my cousin considered legitimate, which definitely made her feel better, even if my stepmother had gone through with her conversion, my sister also would have still been considered legitimate after her parents' marriage had been annulled.

So no, we would not have had three consecutive generations of illegitimate births.

But it still makes a good story.

When I discovered that my grandfather's divorce in 1953 was from Elizabeth and not from Anna, I called my father and told him, "Guess what?  You're a bastard!"  He thought it was hilarious.  And my sister was highly amused at the thought that she would be considered illegitimate if her parents' marriage were annulled.  We have a good sense of humor in this family.

Image by Steve Buissinne, stevepb, through Pixabay.  Used under the Pixabay content license.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Three Things about an Ancestor

Tonight Randy Seaver has us thinking about the details of our ancestors' lives for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun.

Here is your assignment, should you decide to accept it (you ARE reading this, so I assume that you really want to play along; cue the Mission:  Impossible! music!):

1.  What are three things about one of your ancestors that you have learned doing genealogy research?

2.  Write your own blog post, or leave a comment on this post, or write something on Facebook.

I chose my great-grandmother Laura May (Armstrong) Sellers Ireland.

• Laura May Armstrong was born May 7, 1882 in Burlington County, New Jersey to Joel Armstrong and Sarah Ann Deacon Lippincott.

• Laura bore at least ten children, only four of whom survived to adulthood:
Bertram Lynn Sellers, Sr. (1903–1995)
Cornelius Howard Sellers (about 1904–1905)
Amelia Sellers (after 1904–before 1920)
Catherine Marie Sellers (about 1907–1989)
George Moore Sellers (1908–1975)
Nellie Elizabeth Sellers (1912–2004)
Harry J. Sellers (1913–1913)
Herman J. Sellers (about 1914–between 1915–1920)
Birdsall Sellers (1916–1916)
Bertolet Grace Sellers (1921–1927)

• Laura was apparently a bit of a wild woman for her time.  She gave birth to my grandfather in 1903 without benefit of a husband; his birth certificate, which took quite a while to track down, has merely the socially disapproving "OW" (out of wedlock) on the line where the father's name would normally appear.  She married Cornelius Elmer Sellers seven months after my grandfather was born.  Then, in 1921, almost three years after Elmer had died, she gave birth to another child who did not have a father's name on the birth certificate.

Some Things Never Change

As I have been writing my "family events" posts for the blog, I sometimes pause to do some quick research to see if I can quickly find a full birth location, wedding date, or something similar for which I currently have incomplete information.  And sometimes the records I find yield the desired information plus a little extra.

If you're having trouble reading the handwriting, it says:

Do Not Publish
Pregnancy Quite Noticeable
only on gal of course

This marriage took place in October 1939 in Indiana.

The marriage license application did provide the information I was seeking, along with this tidbit.  I don't know if I have a record of the child, because no one fits the timeframe of the pregnancy, as the family is constructed so far.  It's possible the child didn't survive, or was given a future-dated birthdate for public consumption.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Ahnentafel Roulette

This week's challenge for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun gives, unfortunately, a predictable result at the beginning for almost everyone, but improves after that.

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

(1) What year was one of your great-grandparents born?  Divide this number by 100 and round the number off to a whole number. This is your "roulette number."

(2) Use your pedigree charts or your family tree genealogy software program to find the person with that number in your ancestral name list (some people call it an "ahnentafel").  Your software will create this; use the "Ahnentafel List" option, or similar. Who is that person, and what is his/her vital information?

(3) Tell us three facts about the person in your ancestral name list with the "roulette number."

(4) Write about it in a blog post on your own blog, in a Facebook status or a Google Stream post, or as a comment on this blog post.

(5) NOTE:  If you do not have a person's name for your "roulette number" then "spin" the wheel again.  Pick someone else — a grandfather, a parent, a favorite aunt or cousin, yourself, or even one of your children!

1.  I think most people's great-grandparents will have been born in the 19th century; some will have great-grandparents born in the 20th century.  So that means the roulette number is limited to 18, 19, 20, or 21.  I suspsect most participants will end up with 19 as their result, and 20 will be second.

No matter which of my great-grandparents (whose birth years I know) I choose, the birth year is in the late 1800's (ranging from 1870 to 1892), which means dividing by 100 equals something between 18.7 to 18.92, which rounds up to 19.

2.  Number 19 produces the same result for me that it did for Randy, my paternal great-great-grandmother.  For me, that person is Sarah "Sally" Anne [Deacon] Lippincott.

• Sarah was born August 23, 1860 in Burlington County, New Jersey (probably in Moorestown or Springfield) to Abel A. Lippincott and Rachel R. Stackhouse.
• She married Joel Armstrong on October 5, 1878 in Burlington, Burlingotn County, New Jersey.
• I don't have a confirmed date of death for Sarah, but she died after 1904, because I have found her in the 1905 New Jersey state census.  Some family trees list her death about May 13, 1928, but with no documentation.

3.  Three facts about Sarah Anne (Lippincott) Armstrong:

• Sarah had three known children:  Rachel Anna, who married three times and had seven children; Stacy Biddie (a boy), who married a widow and fathered six children; and Laura May, my great-grandmother, who married at least twice, had about eight children with her first husband, and bore two children out of wedlock (including my grandfather).

• Sarah and Joel appear to have divorced prior to 1900.  Each of them was enumerated in the 1900 census and listed as widowed.

• I have a photograph purported to be of Sarah and Joel, but I'm not sure it's actually them.

Could "Bertram" and "Bertolet" Be Named for the Same "Bert"?

Bertolet Grace Sellers birth certificate, March 6, 1921, father "unknown"

I've written previously about how I proved that the man my great-grandmother married was my grandfather's adoptive father.  Of course, once I did that, my new task became the search for my grandfather's biological father.

The starting point for this search has been going back over some of the information that led me to suspect in the first place that Elmer might not have been Grandpa's father:

• no father's name was listed on Grandpa's birth certificate

• father's name was added to Grandpa's amended birth certificate in 1940, 22 years after Elmer (the supposed father) had died

• my grandaunt told me that my grandfather, Bertram Lynn, was named after a close family friend, even though he was the oldest son

• my great-grandmother had a daughter three years after her husband had died and named her Bertolet

The last two in particular have really had my mind whirling.  Not only do Bertram and Bertolet have "Bert" in common, let's face it, "Bertolet" isn't exactly your garden-variety, everyday name.  I started thinking, Hey, maybe this guy's name really was Bert-something (maybe Bertram?), and Laura and he got together again after Elmer died.  That's why she named her daughter Bertolet, after him.

I figured the most direct way to try to find the answer was obtaining Bertolet's birth and death certificates.  Makes sense, right?  So when my sister told me she was going to Trenton again to visit the state archives, I asked her to look for Bertolet.

She found both of the certificates.  But . . . Laura foiled us again.  Neither certificate lists the father!  So much for the easy route.  That woman sure liked to keep her secrets.

Bertolet Grace Sellers death certificate, January 11, 1927, father "not known"

While there could be several reasons why Laura declined to state that particular piece of information (twice!), I'm leaning toward him being married.  My sister, on the other hand (who is named after our great-grandmother), came up with a really complicated theory:

What if our great-grandfather was a married man (most likely) and wanted to name his child Bertram.  Laura gets pregnant and "Papa Lynn" insists he'll take the child away from her . . . IF it's a boy.  Laura doesn't want the child taken away from her, so declares the child a female and names "her" Gertrude on the birth certificate.

Actually calling/naming Grandpa Bertram Lynn was thumbing her nose at Papa Lynn, even though she corrected the BC years later.

In the meantime, Papa Lynn goes on with his life and Laura marries Elmer.

Papa Lynn HAS his baby boy and names him Bertram.
 
But wait . . . Papa Lynn was NOT a married man, but Laura's childhood sweetheart from an affluent family!  She was their domestic!  He was a few years younger and his family frowned upon the older Laura.  The family threatens to take her male offspring, so she names him Gertrude and then marries Elmer.

Elmer dies and Laura reaches out to Papa Lynn to confess her secret.  They rekindle the flame and create Bertolet.

How's that for melodrama?

Whatever the reason was, we didn't get the answer we were hoping for.  Now I'm working on the Y-DNA angle.  My father has a match at 111 – 4 markers, which means something like 6th cousins.  Luckily, the guy has a bare-bones family tree on FTDNA.  I'm working it backward and bringing every male line forward in time, hoping to find someone who plausibly could have been in Burlington County, New Jersey (or Philadelphia as a reasonable second possibility) in 1902.

In a funny coincidence, the man who matches my father has an Irish name.  Maybe that Ancestry DNA test will prove to be right about my Irish ancestry after all?

"Who Do You Think You Are?" - Molly Ringwald

I was looking forward to the Molly Ringwald episode of Who Do You Think You Are?, not only because I actually knew who she was, but also because the commercials said that she was going to work on her Swedish ancestry.  I've done enough Swedish research to know that vast numbers of records are online.  I was looking forward to seeing whether they had her travel to Sweden (which I fully expected) and how many records she would be shown that are available online, where you can look at them at 2:00 in the morning in your pajamas (but that wouldn't be as exciting as foreign travel, would it?).

The advertising teaser told us that Molly Ringwald would follow her ancestors back to Sweden and learn the truth about their harrowing lives.  She would discover generations who suffered unspeakable tragedies and a brave relative who forever changed the family's fate.  (A little more melodramatic than usual, perhaps?)

In the introduction to the episode itself, the narrator says that Ringwald is a celebrated actress who started at an early age.  Her breakout role was as Samantha Baker in Sixteen Candles, which made her a Hollywood icon.  She has had success on stage and screen and recently on television also, in The Secret Life of the American Teenager.  She has authored two bestselling books and is an accomplished jazz singer.  She lives in New York with her husband and their three children.

Ringwald says that was born in Roseville, California, a suburb of Sacramento.  She always knew she wanted to be creative.  According to her parents, when she was 6 she announced to the family she would be a famous movie star or "something like that."  Now that she is, however, she has learned that being a performer gives you a false sense of self.  So family is very important to her, and she doesn't know how she could survive without it.  Her family is close; she grew up with big family dinners, and holidays were a big deal.  She realizes she was dealt a good hand.

Ringwald's mother, Adele, was a stay-at-home mom.  She is personable and a storyteller.  Her father, Bob, is a blind musician.  He inspires respect, and people love him.  She and her father complement each other.  Ringwald's relationship with her father is a precious gift to her.  She would love to know more about his side of the family and share that with him.  In the family, he is the most excited about her genealogy journey.  She knows she's German on both sides, except for her father's maternal grandfather, who was Swedish.  She's never felt connected to her Swedish side and is curious to learn anything about it.  She doesn't know her ancestor's name, only that her father said he was called "the Swede."  She figures her father must know his name, but all she knows is "the Swede."

To begin her journey to learn about her Swedish great-grandfather, Ringwald visits her father in Brooklyn Heights.  When she walks in, her father is playing piano.  She gets him up, saying, "C'mon, let's go" (that camera crew can't wait forever, Dad!).  After sitting down with him on the couch, she says, "I'm on this journey to discover more about our family," and asks what the Swede's name was.  Her father does know and tells her it was Edwin Gustav Jenson.  Bob's grandmother told him Edwin had come from Sweden when he was 3 years old.  He later worked as a bricklayer in California.

Bob's knowledge only goes so far, however.  He doesn't know where in Sweden Edwin came from.  He was probably told by his grandmother but doesn't remember.  Both of Bob's grandparents died before Molly was born, Emma about 1958 or so and Edwin at the end of the 1960's.  He never asked any questions so doesn't know why the family came to the United States.  Bob says that Edwin had a sense of humor and was full of BS; you never knew if the stories he was telling were true.  One story was that if he had stayed in Sweden, he would have to become the king.  Bob believed that story for years.

That's the extent of Ringwald's visit with her father.  She hugs him and says, "Good to see you."  Outside, she says to learn that little was both exciting and frustrating.  She wants to know where her great-grandfather came from and why the family moved to America.

index entry on Ancestry.com
for Edwin Jenson's death

Her first research stop is close by:  the Brooklyn Central Library, where professional genealogist Brian Béla Schellenberg is waiting for her. (We saw him on the Ginnifer Goodwin episode.)  She admits she has already sent him what little information she had.  Schellenberg tells her that he took the information and searched death records, and now he has a copy of Jenson's death certificate (suitably redacted by the state of California to protect everyone's privacy, even though the man died more than 50 years ago).  Ringwald says that Edwin Jenson died October 20, 1965 (but the California death index says 1963; I wonder if that was deliberate misdirection or if the index is wrong).  He was born February 28, 1885 in Sweden; his parents were Gustav Jenson and Carolina Grip.  The death certificate also has that he was dead on arrival in the Roseville Hospital in Placer County, his usual residence was 7201 Mariposa Avenue (probably in Roseville), and his occupation was self-employed brick mason.

Ringwald tells Schellenberg that Edwin immigrated to the United States when he was about 3 years old.  He suggests they look for him in the census, which is conducted every ten years.  She says that probably the first census he would be in was 1890 (she knows the years of the census?), but Schellenberg tells her it was completely destroyed by fire (no, it wasn't; about 25% of it was, but the bulk of it was left to rot in the water used to put out the fire, and the moldy mess it became was tossed out more than ten years later).  He says, "Let's go on Ancestry" (9 minutes into the episode) and look at the 1900 census, the next one available.

They do find Edwin, living with his family in Washington County, Nebraska, listed with the last name of Jensen.  The census says he was born in July 1885 in Sweden.  His parents are Gustav (indexed by Ancestry as George), a farmer born in April 1855, and Carolina, born July 1857, both in Sweden.  They lived on a farm that was rented.  Schellenberg discusses the 1862 Homestead Act, which allowed settlers to go west, claim land, prove that they had developed it for five years, and then gain the title for free.  This brought many Swedes and other Europeans to the United States for the opportunity to own land.  Some speculators bought multiple lots and rented them to others, which was probably the case with Gustav.  (Did only homestead speculators rent land?  What about the family two up on the census page:  Peter Johnson, born in 1847 in Sweden, arrived in the U.S. 1870; he could be Gustav's brother.  Maybe it's his land Gustav is renting.)  The camera zooms in for a close-up of the birthplaces on the census page, and Ringwald says, "Sweden, Sweden, Sweden", but only the parents and Edwin were born there; the other children were born in Nebraska.  (A curious piece of information to be gleaned from the census is that Gustav said he had immigrated in 1877, while Carolina arrived in 1887.  So I'm wondering how Gustav, if he had been in the U.S. since 1877, could have fathered Edwin, who was born in 1885 in Sweden.  Just a thought.)

United States 1900 Census, Fontenelle Township, Washington County, Nebraska,
June 8, 1900, Enumeration District 130, Sheet 4A, lines 12–19

Curiosity appropriately piqued, Ringwald says that she wants to learn more.  Of course, Schellenberg says the best place to do that is to go to Sweden, because the Swedish are amazing record keepers.  (One point to Janice:  Yes, they send her to Sweden.)

Leaving the library, Ringwald says that yesterday she felt no connection to her Swedish ancestors, but now that has changed.  Just having their names has made a difference.  Knowing that her great-great-grandparents were Gustav and Carolina has made them more real.  Next she wants to learn where they lived in Sweden and what they did.

Ringwald goes to southern Sweden, apparently to the Regional State Archives in Lund.  As she goes through the city she is curious whether her relatives walked the streets of a city like this or if they lived in a rural area.  She also wonders about her great-great-grandmother Carolina's family.

In the archives, Ringwald meets with archivist Petra Nyberg (who has no on-screen credit, the first time I've seen that), who explains that a law was passed in 1686 requiring that annual household surveys be conducted by the clergy.  They collected information about births, marriages, and more.  The first book Nyberg brings out has Lysnings och Vigselbok ("Banns and Marriages") 1880–1893 on the spine.  The records are for Helsingborgs parish.  Nyberg has Ringwald put on conservator gloves, and she puts on a pair herself.  The relevant pages in the book are marked, so they're not just flipping through everything.  Nyberg suggests Ringwald look for the marriage of Gustav and Carolina before 1885, because Edwin was born in 1885 (for which they have shown no proof, of course, so as far as we've seen they're taking the census' word on it).  Ringwald asks whether the record is in Swedish, which of course it is.  That notwithstanding, she somehow manages to find the marriage record:  Gustaf Jönsson (pronounced "Yenson") and Carolina Grip were married on May 3, 1884.

Helsingborgs Banns and Marriages 1880–1893, page 55 (edited image)

The marriage record lists Gustav's occupation as a mine laborer from Höganäs.  The record also includes both of their birthdates:  Gustav was born April 23, 1855, and Carolina was born July 18, 1857.  (Second point to Janice:  I got this record online here in the U.S.) The record doesn't include much information, but Nyberg says that Höganäs had been a coal mining town since about 1800.

The next book brought out is Höganäs Kyrkobok ("Höganäs Church Book"), which has births from 1854–1861.  Carolina's birth is confirmed as July 18, 1857:

Höganäs Births 1854–1861, page 37

Nyberg provides a translation of this record:

-- >< -- >< -- >< -- >< --

1857
July 18 born deceased mine-laborer No. 303 Carl Grip and his surviving widow Kjersti Johnson's daughter, baptized 26 July - Carolina.  Saddle maker Lars Johnson's wife Johanna Hörstidz of Gr carried the child; Miss Bothilda Gustafsdr of the mine and Miss Christina Grip of No. 13 Väsby were witnesses.

-- >< -- >< -- >< -- >< --

The record says that Carolina's parents were Carl Grip and Kjersti (pronounced "sher-stee") Johnssonsdotter, that she was baptized on July 26 — and that her father was deceased.  Ringwald asks if he died in a coal mine, but the record doesn't give that information.  (Third point to Janice:  This record is online also.)  Something Nyberg does not mention is that normally in Sweden, if the father died before the child was born, the child was considered illegitimate.  Carolina's birth record does not indicate she is illegitimate, however.

Ringwald is happy to learn the names of her 3x-great-grandparents and wants to know if Carl Grip chose to work in the mines or if it was simply the type of work his family did.  Nyberg says no one would choose to do that work, as it was very hard.  It could be that he was from a family where his father worked in the mines, so he did the same work because he had no other option.  If his parents didn't own land or a farm, it was difficult to find agricultural work.  Mining was dangerous industrial work.  Nyberg ends by suggesting that Ringwald go to Höganäs if she wants to know more about the family.  It is north of Lund.

Leaving the archives, Ringwald is intrigued by what she has learned so far and wants to know how Carolina's father died.  She is close to her father, so she feels sorry that Carolina didn't have a father.  She wonders what happened and how the family survived.

In Höganäs, Ringwald notes that it's cold and dark, without much daylight for the time of year (I guess she was there in late fall or winter).  She finds it beautiful but thinks it would be hard to live there.  She is meeting historian Erik Thomson (from the University of Manitoba; we saw him in the Tom Bergeron episode; his Web page says his special interests are French and Swedish history, an interesting combination) at an address he gave her.  It turns out to be the entrance to a mine.  It is the last open mine in Höganäs; there used to be 50.  It's still dangerous enough that they both put on helmets with lights, before they even go past the fence.  Ringwald comments that her ancestors worked in mines like these because they had no other opportunities.  Thomson explains that Sweden had primarily an agrarian society until the 1870's to 1880's.  Ringwald adds that her ancestors probably did not wear hats like they're wearing; Thomson agrees and adds, "If they even had hats."

The narrator tells us that late in the 18th century Sweden began mining coal because it was cut off from its previous coal suppliers, who were in a war with France.  The mines in Höganäs at first used Russian prisoners of war and children from orphanages because it was difficult to find locals who would do the work.  Later, when young men were more desperate for work, they finally went to the mines.  The narrator, by the way, makes no attempt to pronounce Höganäs correctly, whereas Ringwald does a pretty good job.

Thomson points out the limestone and coal to Ringwald and tells her that the coal usually lay within a narrow band between two to three feet wide.  The miners often crouched on their sides in standing water, hacking away at the wall of the shaft to get at the coal.  He then goes to the entrance of the mine, and Ringwald says, "And I'm supposed to go in there?" in a slighty panicked voice that made me think she might be claustrophobic.  She eventually does go in, of course.

The two discuss how the work was fairly dangerous, and Ringwald wonders how her great-great-grandfather died.  Conveniently, Thomson has a translation of Carl's death record with him.  (All this window dressing just to show a translation of a death record?  Sheesh.)  Ringwald reads the entire short translation.

Died in 1857
January 26 - Died coal-cutter No. 303 Carl Grip as a result of being hit in the head by a rock fall in the Royal Shaft, buried 1 February.

Ringwald is quiet and contemplative for a moment, then notices that the rock is soft and asks if it was always like that.  Thomson says it was and that rock falls were common; people died regularly in the mines.  He points out the water dripping nearby and says that in mines close to the coast sometimes shafts flooded to waist level.  The men used candles for light and kept up their morale by drinking alcohol provided by the mine company.  The two agree that the drinking could have made for less-than-clear minds, which would not improve the danger inherent in the work.

Thomson comments about Carl being only 26 years old when he died.  Ringwald adds that Kjersti had a baby on the way.  It was unbelievable that people worked under these horrible conditions, and it must have been hellish.  She takes a small chunk of rock, apparently as a souvenir, and admits to Thomson, "I'm a little claustrophobic."  They then head for the exit.

Outside of the mine, Ringwald looks happier to be in the open air.  She thinks more about her 3x-great-grandfather dying at 26, when his life was just beginning.  He didn't get to see his daughter, which is very sad.  It also must have been frightening for Kjersti, who was pregnant and then a widow.  How would she support herself and the baby?

The next day Ringwald meets with Thomson again, this time in the Höganäs parish church.  He had said they would find out what happened after Carl died in the mine.  He tells her that this is her ancestors' church.  She says it's beautiful and then asks, "You have some documents for me?"  They move to a round card table which looks horribly tacky in the church sanctuary.

First Thomson has the household exam from 1857.  It shows Carl, Kjersti, and Ida, who was Carolina's older sister, but they have been crossed out.  Being crossed out means that the person died or moved.  Carl was deleted because he was dead, but Kjersti and Ida were deleted because household #303 was designated as a miner's family residence.  As Kjersti was a widow, she had to move out of the miner housing.  Thomson says that the G.E. before the 42 on the record is "Gruva Enka" (or something like that; I have no idea how badly I've spelled it), or "mine widow."  Ringwald thinks it's dehumanizing that everyone is designated by residence numbers, but Thomson points out it was a useful way to identify people when they were underground, with rocks falling on their heads.  (Does that mean the men carried their household numbers somewhere on them?  From a modern perspective, those numbers are also incredibly helpful when you're doing Swedish research, because you can follow the family from one residence to the next.)

Höganäs Household Exams 1854–1861, Household 303, page 164

The record for household #303 shows that Carl Grip was born July 19, 1830 and that Kjersti Johnsson was born January 17, 1834.  It also shows the child in the household, Ida, was born February 20, 1855.  (Another point to Janice for another online record.)

Ringwald wonders how old Kjersti was.  Thomson points out the record shows she was born in 1834, so when Carl died in 1857 she was 23 years old.  Ringwald is struck by the fact that she was a widow with one child and another on the way.  She then is hit by a sobering thought:  "I was moving to Paris when I was 23."  She has "definitely [had] a different life."  Returning to Kjersti, she asks where she would have moved.  There was housing set aside for widows.

The narrator elaborates.  Kjersti and Ida would have moved into widows' housing, probably owned by the Höganäs coal company.  From the early 1800's to the 20th century, widows and children of deceased miners lived in this type of housing if they had no other options.  Some spent the rest of their lives there.

Ringwald wonders if her ancestor Carolina was born in the widows' home.  Thomson says she was and hands her a translation of an oral history recorded in the 1940's about what the widows' housing was like.  Ringwald reads portions of the text.

-- >< -- >< -- >< -- >< --

South of Brorsbacke-farm, toward Tivoli Bowl, lay a long wooden building called the Widows' House.  It was just one meter wide, which separated it from Brorsbacke-farm.  In the Widows' House resided the Höganäs Company's poorest widows, 8–10 of them (According to Albin Hamberg's depiction of his childhood, there lived 20 widows there along with children).  The widows each had their own little room with a floor space of 2 x 3 meters.  Through the whole building went a long hall or corridor, in which two fireplaces were placed.  They consisted of a large brick stove with iron slabs, shared by all the widows.  There the widows could cook their food and boil their chicory coffee.  Moreover, these fireplaces were for heating all the rooms.  One would just open the door to their room so that the heat would penetrate it.  During the winter it was kept going day and night, which the widows had to provide for themselves, although the mining company provided free tinder which comprised of coal No. 3, so-called coal chips.

There were no head mistresses or nurses available other than the widows helping themselves the best they could if they became ill or bedridden.  They had 2–3 crowns [a denomination of money] a month poor-relief, but it did not reach far.  Local neighbors often brought them food or a treat.  But this had to be done in secret, otherwise there would be jealousy from those without means.  Most of them were fed and mobile and therefore went to the country to beg.

-- >< -- >< -- >< -- >< --

Ringwald stops reading and asks whether the widows had any money or insurance.  Thomson says that they had something but not much.  He doesn't mention the housing but says if the widow had children, the same allowance (a section which Ringwald did not read aloud, so it was a non sequitur when he said it) simply had to stretch further.  (Personally, I was struck by the irony of the widows having to heat their rooms with coal, the mining of which caused their husbands' deaths.)  Ringwald then picks up reading the translation again.

-- >< -- >< -- >< -- >< --

It was the worst for the widows during the winter when it was cold.  Albin Hamberg tells us about an event in the beginning of the 1880's.  One of the widows, "Hultin's Ingrid," was found one morning frozen to death beside a fence in Längaröd.  But as the weather was bad, she did not have the strength enough to reach all the way home, though she was quite close.

It was all quite poor and miserable in the widow house.

-- >< -- >< -- >< -- >< --

Ringwald is somewhat angry that the mining company didn't take care of the widows and that they were forgotten and forsaken.  (That was the way of the industrial revolution, unfortunately.)  She asks if Kjersti stayed in the widow's home.  Thomson says they can look at the widow's home records (which is the household exam for those residences).  He has a record showing Kjersti, Ida, Carolina, and another daughter, Johanna, crossed out from another household.

Höganäs Household Exams, Household 42, 1854–1861, page 282

This is the residence to which Kjersti moved after Carl Grip died.  On Kjersti's line (the second name), it has 303 in the fifth column and 57 in the sixth column, indicating she moved to this residence from #303 in 1857.  The seventh column shows that she moved to residence #207, and the eighth column shows it was in 1861, which is why the four names have been crossed out.  (One more point to me for a record found online.)
(What Thomson does not discuss is that the mark to the left of Johanna'a name indicates she was illegitimate.  The page shows that Johanna was born June 18, 1861.  What you can't see on this page is that Kjersti did not marry Johanna's father until after her birth.  Johanna's baptismal record lists only her mother's name as a parent and identifies her as a widow.  Since Ringwald's first child was born before she and her husband married, you'd think they might have brought up the subject, because she could identify with it.  By the way, I found the baptismal and marriage records online also.)

Kjersti married another miner (Johannes Andersson) in 1861 (on December 11), so she was able to move back into a miner residence.  These were larger, and the family had more income.  So Kjersti spent four long years in the widows' house with her children.  Thomson tells Ringwald to imagine being in a 2 x 3 meter room with children all winter.  Ringwald responds that she has three children, and she can't imagine spending even one day with them in a room that small.

Thomson then lets Ringwald know that Kjersti's second husband also died, so she had to return to the widows' house.  (No details about that were discussed on screen, but yes, I found those records online.  Johannes Andersson died March 20, 1864, and Kjersti and three children — she had another child with Johannes, a son, in 1863, but Ida died in 1862 — moved to household #46 the same day.  Maybe that was too much harshness for Ringwald.  Oh, and I think I'm up to 9 points.)

Ringwald says that Carolina left and had moved to Nebraska by 1900.  (Thomson does not bring up the fact that the date of Carolina's departure from Sweden should be documented in the household exams also.  I did not follow Carolina past 1866, when she was living with her mother and siblings in household #46 in the widows' house, but I easily could have done so.)  Ringwald asks if she can keep the documents before she leaves the church.

Ringwald is still angry that more was not done for the widows, whom she feels were badly mistreated.  Carolina knew only poverty growing up and couldn't have had much hope for more.  Ringwald doesn't know how she found the strength to go on, but she obviously did.  Now Ringwald is leaving Sweden to head to Washington County, Nebraska, where Carolina went when she left.

In Washington County Ringwald drives to the courthouse (which is in Blair).  She knows from the census that Gustav and Carolina had been renting land.  Now she wants to find out what kind of life they had and whether they were happy.  She has contacted someone and asked that person to look for any records about Carolina (Gustav has obviously been totally forgotten by this point).

At the courthouse Ringwald meets Tonia Compton, an assistant professor of the history of women and the American West at Columbia College (and a specialist in women's property rights in the west).  The first item she hands Ringwald is a warranty deed for property dated March 13, 1905.  Carolina Jenson had paid $200 to purchase two lots in the city of Arlington from Herbert and Helene Jayne.  The lots were 7 and 8 in block 22.  Surprisingly, Gustav's name does not appear on the deed, which prompts a question from Ringwald.  Compton admits it was unusual for a married woman to own property in her own name at the time but has found no clear reason in the property records for why it happened in Carolina's case.  Ringwald is happy to see that after the poverty and the widows' home, Carolina got a piece of land.  She tells Compton, "I think she was tough."

Ringwald asks if there's any way to find out exactly where the lots are that Carolina purchased.  Of course there is!  Compton takes out a 1908 book of plat maps (perhaps this book, digitized by the Library of Congress) and goes to the page with a map of Arlington.  Ringwald easily finds block 22 and lots 7 and 8.

1908 plat map of Arlington, Washington County, Nebraska, showing Block 22 at top

The next question, of course, is whether it's still there.  Compton says it is and that it is only about 15 miles from the courthouse, but she has one more document.  Ringwald immediately recognizes it as an obituary.  Compton states the date it was published, February 21, 1935, but does not mention the newspaper name.  (Luckily, the Washington County Genealogy Society transcribed it in 2015 and put it online; it appeared in the Arlington Review Herald.  Before finding it online I went back and forth rewatching the scenes to get the text.)  Ringwald is tearing up by the time she is at the end of the obituary.

-- >< -- >< -- >< -- >< --

Mrs. Gust Jenson

Pneumonia was fatal Wednesday morning when it claimed Mrs. Gust Jenson, 78, a resident of Arlington for thirty years.

Caroline Griep was born in Sweden, July 16, 1857.  She was united in marriage to Gust Jenson on May 3, 1883 in Sweden and to this union was born seven children, all living and as follows:  Edwin G. of Roseville, California, John G. of Herman, Fred W. of Loveland, Ohio, Mrs. Jess Laughlin of Tekamah, Carl G. of Arlington, Mrs. Oscar Anderson of Arlington, and Albert J. of Oakland.  Twenty grandchildren also survive the deceased.  Her husband passed away on August 18, 1930.

She was confirmed in the Swedish Lutheran Church at the age of 16 years.  Mrs. Jenson came with her husband to Washington County, Nebraska, on July 25, 1888, and engaged in farming until in March, 1904, when they moved to Arlington and made their home til the end.

Mrs. Jenson had always stood for the right and taught her family the meaning of truth, justice and mercy.  A kind and loving wife and mother who will be greatly missed and mourned by her children.

Some day, when fades the golden sun
Beneath the rosy tinted west
My blessed Lord will say, Well done!
And I shall enter into rest.  — Fanny Crosby

Funeral services will be held at the Methodist Church Friday afternoon at 2 o’clock. Rev. Rasmussen will be in charge assisted by Rev. McClannahan of Tekamah Union Church.  Pall bearers chosen are J. A. Peterson, Roy R. Peterson, W. E. Autrim, Wm. Kruger, Louis Sorensen and Chet Menking.  Mrs. Cora Hammang, Mrs. Chet Menking and Josephine Swihart in charge of the flowers.  Mrs. Alvin Anderson and Miss Lucy Lawson will sing a duet.  A quartette composed of W. A. Reckmeyer, J. Q. Wallingford, Mrs. Alvin Anderson and Miss Lucy Lawson will sing “Saved by Grace,” and “In the Sweet Bye and Bye.”

-- >< -- >< -- >< -- >< --

I suspect that the spelling of "Griep" is due to the pronunciation of "Grip" in Swedish, which would be "greep."  Carolina's birth is off by two days, and her marriage is off by one year.  This is a great example of how information in obituaries is great as clues, but original records should always be sought.

Ringwald is happy to see the property deed in Carolina's name and thinks it must have felt like a miracle to her.  Being born in the widows' house, not knowing her father, and growing up in such poverty, she couldn't have imagined that one day she would own land.  It must have been very meaningful to her.  Now Ringwald is curious to see where Carolina (not Gustav!) lived and raised her family.

As she drives to the location of the two lots, she mentions that she has been updating her father by e-mail, but she's going to try calling him to tell him the final pieces of the story.  She thinks he has been curious also.

The last few minutes of the episode go back and forth between Ringwald walking around the property and talking to her father on the phone, and her talking to the camera about her impressions.  She walks around a small white house.  Neither the address nor the street name is shown, but the location is easy to determine based on the plat map, because the street names in Arlington have not changed since 1908.  This is another occasion when the producers either did not seek or did not receive permission to see the interior of the home.

The two lots at the corner of 1st Street and Elm Street, Arlington, Nebraska, facing on Elm Street.
Neither house really looks like the one around which Ringwald walked.

Ringwald tells her father that she is in Arlington standing on the land his great-grandmother bought with her own money, and that the deed was in her name.  He asks whether the house is still standing.  She responds that it is but that it looks like it's had additions put on it and probably looks different from when Carolina lived in it, but that an old shed might be from the right period.  (Carolina bought two lots, and both have houses on them now, so someone must have told Ringwald which one to visit.)  She says that Carolina got out of the mines and owned land, which was remarkable.  Her father asks, "So there was no royalty in our family, huh?"  Ringwald tells him that the family couldn't be further away from royalty, but that they came for the American dream and succeeded.

To the camera, Ringwald says she is grateful for her life because her ancestor persevered and didn't give up.  She feels as though she inherited fortitude from her great-great-grandparents.  Now that she has walked in the same places her ancestors lived, she feels a real connection to them.  Carolina changed the family narrative (what about Gustav?!).  With her final look around the property, she says, "Well done, Carolina."

I'm Apparently a Sellers via Informal Adoption

During my extended search for my grandfather's birth record, one of the reasons I continued to try after being rebuffed by the New Jersey State Archives multiple times was, of course, to verify and document his birth date.  But another reason was that I had begun to wonder who his father actually was.

You see, my grandfather had a younger brother, George Moore Sellers.  I was told by their younger sister that George (who actually went by "Dickie") was named after my great-grandfather Cornelius Elmer Sellers' stepfather, George W. Moore, because Elmer loved his stepfather so much.

I had that little factoid filed away in the back of my brain for several years before I suddenly wondered why, if Elmer loved his stepfather so much, did he name his *second* son after the man, and not his first son?  From that it was an easy step to wonder if maybe Dickie actually had been Elmer's first son.

When my sister finally acquired a copy of my grandfather's birth record, it did not resolve the question, as no father was listed.  The fact that my great-grandmother filed an amended birth certificate 37 years later and listed Elmer as the father seemed a little too convenient, as poor Elmer had been dead for 22 years and really couldn't argue about the issue.

It occurred to me that this was a great way to use DNA testing to resolve a question.  I already had the results of my father's Y-DNA test (Y-DNA being the test for the male sex chromosome, passed down from father to son).  I just needed to find a straight male-line descendant of Dickie and convince him to have a test done.  This was even one of the wishes I had in my Dear Genea-Santa letter.

I was lucky in that Dickie had two sons and they each had sons.  I found most of them through online searches and was able to talk one of my cousins into doing the Y-DNA test (which I of course offered to pay for).

And the big news is here.  I received the results of the Y-DNA test for my cousin (grandson of my grandfather's brother) a few days ago.  If the Y-DNA for two men matches, they have to descend from the same male ancestor at some point in the past.  If it does not match, they do not descend from the same man.

After comparing my father's and my cousin's Y-DNA, the conclusion is that Dickie and my grandfather absolutely do not descend from the same man.  My grandfather's biological father was not Cornelius Elmer Sellers, and my family line became Sellerses by informal adoption.  When Elmer married Laura Armstrong, he accepted her 7-month-old son by another man, and as far as I know raised him as his own.  There are no stories in my family that my grandfather (or any of his siblings) ever knew that Elmer was not his biological father.

Speaking of Y-DNA, another reason this didn't come as a big surprise to me is that with more than 1,000 matches at 12 markers, my father has no matches with anyone named Sellers.  My cousin who just took the Y-DNA test?  At 37 markers he has eight matches, five of whom are Sellers.

So I think researching my adoptive Sellers family line back to 1615 is far enough, and I probably won't do too much Sellers research anymore.  On the other hand, now I have to try to figure out just who Grampa's biological father actually was.  And maybe I'll find out that the 12% Irish that Ancestry.com's DNA test claimed for me is actually true.  (Of course, that test also said I'm less than 1% English, when one of my great-grandmothers immigrated here from England and her family is traceable in the Manchester area for five generations.  So I still don't trust the "cocktail party conversation.")

There are some things I'll miss about the Sellers line.  Now I know that I'm not a descendant of Alexander Mack, the founder of the Church of the Brethren (Dunkers); of Justus Fox, a printer in 18th-century Philadelphia who knew Benjamin Franklin; or of Franklin P. Sellers and his son Cornelius Godshalk Sellers, both printers and editors.  And I can't claim Sellersville anymore.  But I'll be sharing all the research I've done with the cousins I've been contacting and letting them know about the rich heritage that's part of the Sellers name.

Skeletons in the Closet: Illegitimate Births

This is one in my occasional series of posts about those "touchy" subjects which may arise during your family history research, or which some relatives may try to have you ignore.  A page listing all of the posts in the series can be found here.

It isn't actually that uncommon to find an illegitimate birth, or more broadly a birth outside of a marriage, in a family.  Modern society doesn't have a lock on the situation; it's been going on for hundreds of years.  There are court cases in the 1600's for financial support for children fathered out of wedlock.  But depending on the family's social status and the specific circumstances, there may have been embarrassment at the time and more now when learning about it.

In some times and places, there wasn't even a stigma attached to having a child out of wedlock as long as the couple stayed together and raised and supported the child.

I recently confirmed that my paternal grandfather was born seven months before his mother married.  I don't know if his father was the man his mother married, as no name appears on the original birth registration.  The fact that my great-grandmother added that husband's name to the amended birth record 37 years later, 22 years after the man in question had died, doesn't exactly make me feel too confident about it.  I'm currently exploring other ways to investigate that and try to learn more definitively who my great-grandfather was.

Several years ago I learned that my grandparents were never married.  My grandfather was still married to his first wife but was a real charmer, and my grandmother apparently was ok with the situation.  My father was surprised to find out, but luckily he has a good sense of humor.

As young soldiers were going off to fight in World War II, many of them convinced their girlfriends to "give" just a little more, which led to several "surprises" about nine months later.  We have one of those in my family also.

The confusing part about researching an illegitimate child is figuring out what surname the birth is registered under.  When searching for my grandfather's record, my first two attempts were for Sellers.  When I learned that his parents had married after his likely birth date, I tried with his mother's maiden name, which I eventually learned was the name on the birth record.  Of course, I was looking for a boy, and I had no way of knowing then that his original record said that he was a female child; that doesn't happen very often, though.  (Though I do have a second example of it in my family:  My half-sister's maternal grandfather, whose name was Francis Maria [a good Irish Catholic name!], was recorded as a girl with the name Frances Maria.)  You just need to leave your mind open to multiple possibilities.

If this research involves relatives who have all passed away, it often doesn't cause too many problems among living family members.  If it's for people who are still alive, your access to records may be affected by privacy restrictions.  Then you'll probably have to ask those living family members for help, and they may not want to talk.  As usual, be diplomatic and nonjudgmental, but don't be surprised if you are rebuffed anyway.  You may simply need to put that particular research on the back burner for a while.

And speaking of skeletons in the closet, the Illinois State Genealogical Society is offering a free Webinar this Tuesday, November 10, on that very subject.  It will run from 8:00-9:00 p.m. Central time.  You can register for it here.

An Administrative Change of Sex

I have tried three times in the past to obtain a copy of my grandfather's birth record by mail.  He had claimed several different years at different times but always used the date of April 6.  He eventually settled on the year of 1903.  The first time I wrote to the New Jersey State Archives in Trenton and requested a search for Bertram Sellers, giving a range of 1903 ± 5 years.  No luck.

The second time I tried "male" Sellers, thinking that maybe the given name had not been formalized yet when the birth was registered, still with the range of 10 years.  "Sorry, no record was found . . . ."

My third attempt was after I had acquired a copy of my great-grandparents' marriage record.  They were married on November 7, 1903.  I thought, Hmm, if he really was born in April 1903, before the marriage, maybe he was registered under his mother's maiden name.  So I sent in a request for Bertram or male Armstrong.  Still nothing!  This was becoming annoying!

I finally decided it was going to require someone going in person to actually browse through the records.  As my sister lives in Pennsylvania, she's the closest relative to Trenton, and she had told me once she would be willing to go look for records to help with the family history research (silly girl!).  So I hit her up, and she agreed to go.  Of course, she keeps a very busy schedule, so it took her a while, but she was finally able to go to Trenton today.  And what did she find?  A record for a female child, *Gertrude* Armstrong, born April 6, 1903, mother's name Laura Armstrong.  No father was listed, merely the socially disapproving abbreviation "OW" (out of wedlock).  With the correct birth date and mother's name, this certainly seemed to be the record we wanted, but Gertrude?  Female?  Was this perhaps a heretofore unknown twin of my grandfather, and his birth was still hiding?

But the lovely people at the archives found a second record.  In 1940, my great-grandmother filed a form to correct or amend a birth certificate.  She said that the child listed as female had actually been male, and instead of Gertrude L. Armstrong, the name really should have been Bertram Lynn Sellers.  Oh, and by the way, since it wasn't on the original record, the father's name was Cornelius Elmer Sellers, and here's the marriage date.  (And I finally understood why the archives had not been able to find the record before.)

So at the age of almost 37, my grandfather had a sex change — on paper.

"Who Do You Think You Are?" - Melissa Etheridge

It is amazing how easy it is to fall behind on things!  But I have finally rewatched the final episode of this season of Who Do You Think You Are? enough times that I think I caught all the information I wanted to, and made enough time in my schedule to write about it.

WDYTYA closed out the season with Melissa Etheridge.  The opening voice-over tells us that she will dig into her French roots and learn about a family shaken by scandal, a turbulent relationship touched by tragedy, and a young adventurer who prospered in Colonial America.  Etheridge herself is a Grammy-winning, multiple-platinum singer with a celebrated career.  Her best known songs are "Come to My Window" and "I'm the Only One."  Her twelfth album, recently released, is This Is M.E., and she won an Academy Award for Best Original Song in 2007 for "I Need to Wake Up" from An Inconvenient Truth.  She lives in Los Angeles with her wife, Linda Wallem, and four children from her previous relationships.

Etheridge tells us that she was born in Leavenworth, Kansas, in 1961; her parents are Elizabeth Williamson and John Dewey Etheridge.  She was very close to her father, who died at the age of 60, when Etheridge was 30 years old.  He grew up in a small town outside of St. Louis, Missouri, in a family of migrant farmers.  From nothing he created something, improving his lot in life to where he had a two-car garage and a house, living the American dream.  The price of achieving that dream was that the family didn't talk about what was required to get there.

Etheridge's mother did some family history research at some point in the past on her father's side of the family and had learned that his mother's line came from Québec.  Etheridge's first large concert was at a convention center in Québec, so she thinks it might be something in her blood (I hope she wasn't serious).  Because she and her father were so close, she wants to learn more about that part of his family and maybe bring a little bit of him back to share with her children.

Apparently basing her search on her mother's research (I hope she did a good job!), Etheridge begins her journey in Québec City.  She meets historian Jennifer J. Davis (of the University of Oklahoma), whom she has asked to look for anything connected to her French-Canadian ancestors (not asking for much, is she?) at the Québec National Archives.  She has brought with her a family tree printout from her mother's research 15 years ago; it looks like it came from a very old version of Family Tree Maker, so it's impressive that Mom has kept it all these years.

We see only parts of the tree, and only the direct line of Janis ancestors is discussed.  First is her paternal grandmother, Golda Martha Janis, born February 8, 1901 in Wayne County, Missouri, died April 1982 in St. Louis, Missouri.  Golda's father was James Felix Janis, born 1868 in St. Francis County, Missouri, died 1957 in Missouri.  His father was Jewell R. Janis, born 1844 in Missouri, who married Martha, born 1849 in Missouri.  Jewell's father was Pierre Antoine Janis, born October 27, 1809, died July 29, 1883.  Pierre's father was Jean Baptiste Janis, born 1759 in Randolph County, Illinois, died 1836 in St. Genevieve, Missouri; he married Marie Reine Barbeau, born 1781 in Randolph County, Illinois.  Jean's father was Nicholas Janis, born January 7, 1720 in Québec, Canada; he married Marie Louise LaSource.  Lastly, Nicholas' father — Etheridge's 6th-great-grandfather — was François Janis, born 1676 in France; he married Simone Brussant.  (A couple of other names on the tree appeared on screen.  Above Jewell's name was Sarah Loving, born 1787 in North Carolina, died October 21, 1871 in Jefferson County, Illinois.  Above Jean Baptiste was Polly Stroop, born 1757, died in St. Clair, Alabama.)  This was similar to Bill Paxton, in that the celebrity already had a good deal of information about the family history.

Etheridge deduces that since Nicholas was born in 1720 in Québec, François was probably there also, and therefore it's a good place to start her research.  Davis says they should start with the census, which has pretty good data.  She takes out a book for the 1716 census of Québec (Recensement de la ville de Québec pour 1716, available freely online, so Etheridge could have looked this up at home).  In the index, Etheridge finds Janis on what she says is page 401, but is actually family #401.  On finding the family in the book, she begins to butcher the French (for which she apologizes, but which unfortunately continues throughout the episode).  François was an aubergiste, which Davis explains was an innkeeper.  His wife was Simonne Brousseau (mispronounced horribly), which Etheridge realizes is her 6th-great-grandmother.  They had children named Charlotte, Antoine, Thérèse, Jacques, François, and Marie Aimé.  Etheridge comments that Nicholas wasn't there but realizes it's because he wasn't born until 1720.  The fact that the family had a servant is not mentioned.

Recensement de la ville de Québec pour 1716, page 50

Etheridge asks where the family lived.  Davis shows her it was on the Rue du Cul de Sac (two pages before that on which the family appears) and says that the street is still there.  (Since the census did not list house numbers, however, there is no way to tell exactly where on the street the Janis family lived.)  Etheridge wants to know where she should look to find more information about the family and is directed to a computer to search in the archives' catalog.  After entering "Francois Janis" Etheridge exclaims, "It's all in French!  Can you tell me what it says?"  Of course Davis can; the result is a short synopsis of a court case.  (Not mentioned is that the synopsis identifies François as no longer a mere innkeeper but the second chef to the governor general.)  David retrieves the file, #720.  (It is also online, in its entirety, for anyone who wants to read the fifteen pages in French.)

François had brought a case against a Jean Debreuil, accusing him of seducing and impregnating François' daughter Charlotte under false promises of marriage.  The case was heard in the ecclesiastical court, not a civil court.  The Catholic church was dominant in Québec.  Davis says, "I believe we have a translation," which was probably a good thing, because it was painful to hear Etheridge trying (and failing miserably) to pronounce French.  (Sorry, I was a French major in college.)

The case, dated October 19, 1724 (which date I could not find anywhere on the pages online), states that Debreuil, the son of the royal notary, a government position, courted Charlotte under the pretext of marrying her.  Charlotte was about 15–16 years old.  The suit was essentially asking for Debreuil to marry Charlotte or pay up.  (Not brought up is that the actual documents state that François was the chef de cuisine for the general, which doesn't sound like a slouch position.)  Etheridge and Davis discuss the fact that Charlotte's parents (actually only her father) are speaking for her and there's no way of knowing what she herself wants.  She is the center of the case but is the only one who doesn't speak.

The narrator pops in with a comment that in 18th-century France, women were the property of their fathers until marriage.  Losing one's virginity could put the family's reputation at risk.

In the court documents, Debreuil called Charlotte a streetwalker, which means he made that statement in court before the bishop.  Davis says this could have affected the reputation of François' inn, which he wouldn't want to have the reputation of a brothel.  (But since the documents say he was the chef de cuisine of the general, was he even still an innkeeper?)  The end result was that Debreuil was fined 20 livres, about what a skilled artisan might earn in a week, payable to the poor of the Hôtel Dieu.  The fine was going to the hospital or to poor relief, not to the family.  Debreuil was held responsible only for not following through on the promise of marriage.  So the settlement provided no income or marriage to poor pregnant Charlotte.

From the church suit we move to a civil suit, dated January 5, 1725.  François was again suing Jean Debreuil, this time for seduction of Charlotte and theft of her virginity.  Debreuil had effectively stolen the Janis family's ability to contract an advantageous marriage for their daughter.  François argued that it was a capital crime, meriting a death sentence (that might be a bit of an overstatement).  Davis says she doesn't know how the suit ended; there are no more documents after that.  (What an anticlimax!)

Davis does have another document to share, however.  This one is a marriage contract dated September 15, 1726 (I can't find it through the archives search), for Jean Etienne Debreuil and Marie Charlotte Janis.  About the only thing Debreuil brought to the marriage was the clothes on his back; he may have been disinherited by his family.  No mention was made of the child.  Etheridge wants to know if this means they actually were married.  Davis says she should go to Ancestry.com and check their records (9:17 into the episode).  Etheridge finds the October 25, 1726 marriage, and François was even a witness.  (I recognized the record immediately as being from the Drouin Collection.  I have no idea how they managed to find it the way that Etheridge searched, but I eventually found it myself another way.  The image I found looks worse than the one I saw on TV, though.)

Because François was a witness, Etheridge wonders if her family was supportive or if they were simply telling her what to do.  At that point, she actually brought more to the marriage than Debreuil did, so there might even have been some love between the two of them.  But what about the child that started all this?  Davis tells Etheridge she should look at the parish registry records at Notre Dame Basilica and offers to meet her there the next morning.

In the interlude Etheridge talks about how moved she is that Charlotte's father defended her in court.  She is certain that her own father would have done the same for her.  (The father-daughter dynamic explains why the show spent so much time researching a collateral line, which is unusual for them.)  She wonders whether Charlotte was really in love and what happened to the child — did it survive?  Was the child the only reason for the marriage?  What was Charlotte's relationship with Debreuil?

The next day, as promised, Etheridge meets Davis at Notre Dame Basilica in some sort of side room.  On a table is a book.  Davis tells Etheridge that the priest has asked them to wear gloves (the infamous conservator gloves) because the documents are delicate.  The book is a chronological list of baptisms in the parish.  On April 29, 1725, Anne Françoise, daughter of Jean Debreuil and Charlotte Janis, was baptized.  So when the ecclesiastical suit was started, Charlotte was about three months pregnant.  The next record Davis goes to is the burial of little Anne Françoise on May 6, 1725, saying she was buried eight days after she was born (so the baptism must have been the day after her birth).  (I found Anne Françoise's baptismal record on Ancestry but not the burial.  It should be in the Drouin Collection; maybe it's because Ancestry's index is that pathetic?)  The surprise here is that the marriage was a year and a half later, so the pregnancy couldn't have been the reason.  Maybe Debreuil actually did love Charlotte!  Maybe his family had prevented the marriage the first time.

Etheridge asks if there's anything more about Charlotte.  Davis says that she died on June 14, 1733 at 26 years of age.  The records don't show the cause of death, but a smallpox epidemic was going on at the time, and about ten percent of the population died due to the disease, so that's the most likely reason.  (I also couldn't find Charlotte's burial record on Ancestry.)

After discussing Charlotte's death, the subject suddenly reverts back to Etheridge's ancestor, Nicholas, who was about 13 years old when his sister died.  Davis said she could not find anything in the parish records for Nicholas as an adult (although showing the baptism of her ancestor apparently wasn't important, that record I managed to find on Ancestry), which indicated he had probably left Québec by that point.  Etheridge brings out the family tree her mother had created, which shows that Nicholas' son, Jean Baptiste Janis, was born in 1759 in Randolph County, Illinois.  Davis says that Randolph County will almost certainly have more records on Nicholas, because Kaskaskia (which is a city in the county, but she doesn't say that) was a social hub and economic trading center.  It sounded like a huge leap to me, but of course I hadn't read the script.

As she leaves the basilica, Etheridge talks about how she believes in love and how despite existing customs and mores love conquers all (obviously reflecting on her own life).  Now she will follow the trail of her 5th-great-grandfather.  Before she leaves Canada, however, she goes to the rue du Cul-de-sac and realizes that when she visited Québec with her father many years previously, the two of them had walked down that street together, without knowing that their family had lived there.  I find it pretty amazing that she was able to remember going down the street, but maybe I'm being cynical.

And the next stop on Etheridge's research tour is indeed Randolph County, Illinois, specifically Chester.  She heads to the county archive-museum, housed in the courthouse addition built in 1864, to meet historian Alexandre Dubé (a specialist in early French North America from Washington University in St. Louis).  And of course, she has asked him to look for any documents he can find on Nicholas.  In the museum, they look in an old-fashioned card catalog (I miss them!).  Not only are there several Janises, Nicholas has three cards with lots of references.  The name also appears as Janisse (which would give the same pronunciation in English as the name has in French with the original spelling).

Before following up on any of the references from the card catalog, Dubé shows Etheridge a 1740's map indicating that Kaskaskia was a large territory in the Midwest.  (I could find no online reference for Kaskaskia other than for the city in Illinois, not even in the David Rumsey map collection; the closest thing I found to the territory shown on the map was Illinois Country.)  Québec is at the top of the map.  They trace Nicholas' journey to the Randolph County area, following the Great Lakes and then down the Ohio River.

The narrator explains that in the first half of the 18th century Kaskaskia was a strategic trading hub in New France, which spanned territory from Hudson Bay all the way south to the Gulf of Mexico.

Then we finally get to a document, for which Dubé fortuitously has a translation ready.  Dated September 26, 1747, it relates to a business partnership between Nicholas and a man named André Roy and was witnessed by a notary.  Roy apparently was ill, and the document was "just in case" something happened to him.  (See the end of this post for the text of the translation.)  As Dubé and Etheridge are talking through the translation, Etheridge asks what the word "voyageur" means, and Dubé explains that while literally it translates to "traveler", in this context is means a long-distance trader.  (So why didn't they actually translate the word in the translation?  Just to give Dubé a chance to explain?)  They were working in the fur trade.  As a voyageur, Nicholas had some experience and skills under his belt.  He would have known what types of items could be traded with the Indians, who supplied the fur pelts.

From the items listed in the contract, Nicholas and Roy appeared to have had some sort of store.  Many things listed were quality trade items, and they seemed to have been pretty successful.  Etheridge reads "idem" as "item" for "one idem old with diamonds", and Dubé does not correct her; it most likely meant the same type of item as had previously just been mentioned, so it was a pair of diamond buckles, not just a generic old "item" with diamonds.  Nicholas was doing very well at 27 years old.  To learn more about him and his family, Dubé recommends that Etheridge look at parish records from Immaculate Conception, the parish for Kaskaskia.

As she leaves Chester to head to the next stop on her discovery tour, Etheridge talks about how much she loves the adventure she is having.  She knows more now about what Nicholas was doing in the area, and he had a great business.  But did he have any family?  Etheridge's father grew up near this area, and learning about her family is breathing life into the history she has here.

After talking about it so much, Etheridge is now finally in Kaskaskia itself, at the Church of the Immaculate Conception.  John Reda, a historian of Colonial America, is there to greet her.  They are going to see if parish records shed any light on the family life of Nicholas.  Reda shows her an entry, but of course she "can't read the fancy French", so another translation is nearby.  On April 27, 1751, Nicolas Jannice (Etheridge does notice the different spelling), son of the late François Jannice and Simone Brussant, married Marie-Louise Taumur, the daughter of Mr. Jean-Baptiste Taumur dit LaSource, a former officer with the militia, and Marie Françoise Rivart.  (We saw Marie-Louise's name on the family tree created by Etheridge's mother, with the maiden name LaSource.  "Dit" names among French-Canadians are a fascinating subject.)  Somehow, the discussion segues from the marriage to how things would be crazy soon due to the British and the upcoming war.

The narrator explains that in 1754 the Seven Years' War would begin, pitting the British against the French in a fight to control the land in North America (in the United States the conflict is commonly called the French and Indian War).  After their defeat in 1763 (yes, I know that makes it 9 years, but the 100 Years' War actually lasted 116 years, so these things aren't very precise), the French lost all their land east of the Mississippi River.

Reda points out that after 1763, the Mississippi River became an international boundary, separating Spanish territory to the west and British to the east.  Because he was on the east side of the river, Nicholas was now a British subject.  He owned a substantial amount of property, but this was a volatile period.

To learn what might have happened to Nicholas during the American Revolution, Reda says he thought of George Rogers Clark, the general who led British forces into Kaskaskia in 1778, and the diary of John Todd, the civil commandant of the area after Clark captured it.  Todd's diary shows that on May 14, 1779, Nicholas was made the captain of the 1st Company for the District of Kaskaskia (not mentioned is that "Batiste" Janis, probably Jean-Baptiste Janis, Etheridge's 4th-great-grandfather, was made an ensign on the same day).  Nicholas was not a young man — Etheridge says he was about 59 years old (another celebrity who likes to track ages) — and Reda agrees, saying that he was not going to fight but would serve as a liaison and an administrator.  He became one of the leading figures collaborating with the Americans.  This was not easy, though, because they were fighting a war for the survival of their new country.

The John-Todd Papers and John Todd Record-Book,
Part III, Early Illinois, page 164

The narrator jumps ahead to the end of the war, pointing out that residents of the Mississippi Valley were British subjects until the end of the Revolutionary War in 1783, when they became citizens of the United States by virtue of the fact that the Americans won.

Reda picks it up from there, saying that with the war over, there came a push for westward expansion.  Americans were coming into the Kaskaskia area in large numbers.  What would Nicholas do for himself and his family?  Would he move again?  Reda says he likely would go to Spanish Louisiana, across the river, but doesn't give any reason why (the only thing I could come up with is "because we found him in records there", but maybe an actual, legitimate reason was cut in editing).

He then produces a census of the Spanish territory which enumerated immigrants coming from the United States during December 1, 1787–December 1789.  Nicholas ("Nicolas") Janis is indeed on the list; his household consisted of nineteen people, fifteen of whom were slaves.

Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1945,
Volume III (Pt. II), page 290

Etheridge appears very deflated at learning this and finds it disturbing.  Reda admits it is part of our past, attempts to gloss over it by saying it was the way of the world in the 18th century, and ends by conceding it is still troubling.  He then focuses on the fact that Nicholas had moved a good-sized household to a different country, across the river, but in reality only a few miles.  Nicholas moved to Sainte Geneviève, the oldest European settlement in the Mississippi Valley on the west side of the river.  Etheridge realizes that Nicholas was living under his fourth national government — starting in Québec and moving to the Illinois Country as a Frenchman, then British rule after the French and Indian War, for a short time in the United States after the American Revolution, and then to Spanish territory.

Always wanting more, Etheridge asks Reda how she can find what happened after that.  He tells her she should go to Sainte Genevieve, where she should be able to find records for Nicholas for the late 1780's.

Leaving Kaskaskia, Etheridge is still disturbed over the revelation that her ancestor owned slaves.  She had never felt that slavery was part of her father's side of the family, and it has really thrown her.  Learning it was part of her family's past just four or five (actually seven) generations ago is eye-opening for her.

As Etheridge drives to the Sainte Genevieve County courthouse, about 15 miles from Kaskaskia, she says she has asked local historian Robert J. Mueller to help her find out what happened in Nicholas' final days.  (How does she know she's going to learn about his final days?  I thought they didn't tell the celebrities ahead of time what was coming up.  Hmmm . . . .)  Mueller says he has a couple of documents to share with her.  He has her put on conservator gloves to handle the 220-year-old paper.

On the document we see, Etheridge recognizes Nicholas' signature at the bottom.  A second signature is from François Janis.  The document is a deed dated April 20, 1796, by which Nicholas Sr. was giving his property to his son François.  Etheridge surmises that François was named for his grandfather, and Mueller agrees.  After nine years in Spanish Louisiana, Nicholas was giving his son a house, barn, stable, garden, and orchard.  Nicholas was then about 76 years old.  Mueller says that François was going to take care of Nicholas as he got older, but we weren't shown anything in the document about that.

We don't see any other document (so much for "a couple" and poor continuity editing), but Mueller says he has one more surprise for Etheridge:  The house that Nicholas deeded to François is still there.  It is the oldest in Sainte Genevieve, and some people believe it to be the oldest house in Missouri.  Mueller adds that he can arrange with the owner of the house (possibly Hilliard and Bonnie Goldman?) for Etheridge to see it.  She is obviously thrilled.

Leaving the courthouse, Etheridge seems somewhat in awe that four generations of her family helped build this part of America.  She feels as though she belongs, especially since her father was born a hundred miles from where she is.  She had believed that her father's family was always poor, but now she knows they were wealthy in the past, not just monetarily but with history.

The house is a big, old, wood building with a porch running the length of the front.  Etheridge walks around and through it, musing about her ancestors.  She used to joke about her heritage being just poor white people forever, but she can't do that now.  Nicholas had so much prosperity, but four generations later (really six) her father was in complete poverty, so wealth just comes and goes.  Now she is successful, so maybe that will last for a while.  She thinks again about how François stood up for Charlotte, because the father-daughter relationship is so important to her (even though she says the mother defended Charlotte also, of which there was no evidence), and she's looking forward to sharing all of this with her own children.

Janis House (Janis-Ziegler House or Green Tree Tavern;
site of first Masonic lodge west of the Mississippi River (slide 3);
and house used in Under These Same Stars:  The Celadon Affair)

Two things I noticed we didn't find out were when Nicholas died and what happened to his slaves.  It's easy to guess that he probably died soon after he deeded his property to his son François, because it often happened that way; when people knew they were very ill and might die soon, they suddenly made out wills and took care of that type of thing.  But since nothing else was said about the slaves, I suspect they were not freed for some time, perhaps not until 1865 and the end of the Civil War.

===

As promised, here is the text of the translation of the contract between Nicholas Janis and André Roy, or at least as much of it as I could work out:

Settlement of the partnership in case of death of André Roy or Nicolas Janisse, 26 September 2747

Today, I the undersigned notary, in presence of the undersigned witnesses, went at the request of André Roy, dangerously ill at Joseph Brassau's place, and Nicolas Janisse, partner and voyageur to the Illinois country with the said André Roy, who, considering the said illness, wanted to put their affairs in order in case God wants to take the said André Roy from this world. . . . They have asked Joseph Brasseau, Jacques Gaudefroy, and Louis Trudeau to please transport themselves along, with the said notary to the house of Widow Jean Baptiste Girard where the said partners hold shop [I]n order to draw up in writing the effects belonging to the said partnership as well as the money, pelts, and other movables, household linens, clothing, of their said partnership that they have mentioned to me in the following manner

Firstly, two pairs of buckles, one large for shoes and one for garter, one idem old with diamonds, one pair Spanish buttons marked with needlework, all in silver

Item - each a capot of cadis [wool cap], half new
Item - each a strongbox
Item - three quarts of limbourg in two pieces
Item - a bottle trunk of twelve bottles of a pint each
Item - each their gun
Item - A stoneware jar of six to seven pots
Item - 108 pounds of gunpowder
Item - a vest and velour breeches, used with gold buttons
Item - a two-point blanket of white wool
Item - a set of goat hair buttons for a complete suit and 19 skeins of goat hair
Item - an old cloth jacket
Item - a silver goblet and one of glass
Item - nine men's shirts trimmed good and bad
Item - one pair of breeches and a jacket of cotton dimity
Item - a cotton jacket embroidered in wool
Item - five pairs of silk stockings, good and bad
Item - two pairs of wool stocking
Item - two hair purses
Item - two pounds seven skeins of Rennes thread
Item - one and a half dozen fixed blade knives
Item - 165 pounds of beaver
Item - five and a half pounds of deer skins used
Item - a bear skin
Item - 20 pounds of beaver
Item - 50 pounds of plate lead
Item - 59 1/2 pounds of game shot
Item - five pairs of military shoes
Item - two iron molds for bullets
Item - a covered stockpot of around four pots in [cut off]
Item - two idem of which one is half new and the cover(?) of tin
Item - around 400 pounds of brown sugar
Item - 39 pounds of tobacco in carrot
Item - one tierçon of 56 pots of brandy
Item - a barrel of vin d'orange
Item - the sum of 226 livres in Spanish dollars and [cut off]
Item - the sum of 717 livres 15 5 deniers
Item - 130 livres owed [cut off]

===

This was another episode where I found a transcript online, so if you want to read pretty close to the verbatim conversations, you can.