Family Discoveries: Franklin P. Sellers

The Jeffersonian
(Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania),
December 19, 1850, page 2

When I posted recently about my second-great-grandfather Cornelius Godshalk Sellers, I mentioned that I had found his father's name, Franklin Sellers, several times on a blog about Warren County, New Jersey, in the Civil War.  Most of the posts about Franklin were related to the newspaper he published, the Belvidere Intelligencer.  He was very pro-Union and invited Belvidere soldiers to write to him at about their experiences, and he would publish their letters in the newspaper.  He seems to have held true to his word, because I found several examples on the site.  He apparently was having a feud with John Simerson, the publisher of the Warren Journal, so his solicitation of letters from soldiers may not have been entirely patriotic, as publishing the letters was sure to help circulation.

Also mentioned in three of the transcribed newspaper articles was Franklin's stepson, William (or maybe John) Mathews.  I already was pretty sure my third-great-grandmother had been married previously, because the record of her marriage to Franklin Sellers called her "Mrs. Rachel Mathews", but this was the first time I had found information that she had children from the earlier marriage.  I'm currently on the hunt for documents about William, but in a timely coincidence, soon after I read that he was present when Colonel Elmer Ellsworth was shot and killed while taking down a Confederate flag in Washington, D.C., Antiques Roadshow aired a segment in the first episode of the new season with someone who brought in a piece of that very flag.  I got goosebumps watching it!

Through the Chronicling America newspaper directory, I have found the names of more newspapers for which Franklin was the publisher.  The Public's Advocate and Literary & Humorous Journal (now how's that for a name?) was published in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, beginning in 1838.  Olive Branch, under several name variations, was also published in Doylestown, from 1842 to about 1853; Franklin was the editor in 1851.  From sometime between 1850–1853 to 1857, Olive Branch came from Norristown, Pennsylvania.  Concurrent with that, The People's Beacon and Independent Weekly Record appeared in Lambertville, New Jersey, from 1853–1858.  And then there was the Belvidere Intelligencer, which Franklin ran from 1861 until his death in 1863.  (What was he doing between 1858 and 1861?)  I know newspapers from that period are hard to come by, but boy I would love to have a copy of at least one newspaper which he published.

Franklin's name shows up a few times in histories of Doylestown and Bucks County.  The stories say that he started Olive Branch, which was a temperance newspaper, because he himself had previously had troubles with alcohol.  (I'm sure many people will find it amusing that I have an ancestor who was involved in the temperance movement.)  But one history of Doylestown said it was a "very spicy paper", so I guess he wasn't stodgy!

If all of that weren't enough to demonstrate that Franklin was a newspaperman through and through, every document I received from the New Jersey State Archives relating to him was a receipt for payment for publishing advertising, announcements, and more for the Union cause.  Maybe I can claim I got part of my interest in editing and publishing from him?

I now have a mystery about Franklin, though.  My previous research had indicated his middle name was Peter.  According to the transcribed articles on the Warren County Civil War blog, however, he called himself Franklin Pierce Sellers in his newspaper.  Jay Richards, the author of the blog, suggested that Franklin might have renamed himself to sound more "presidential."  I will, of course, be adding the middle name question to my (long) list of research items . . . .

"Who Do You Think You Are?" - Kelly Clarkson

It was kind of weird watching Who Do You Think You Are? again.  It's been off the air for a while now, and I guess I got out of the habit (also evidenced by my lack of reporting on the last episodes of season 3).  The first episode of the new season on TLC was available as a download early, but I wanted to wait to see it on television so I could enjoy the whole experience, complete with Ancestry.com commercials.

The first thing that struck me was that when I looked for the show in the online TV guide, it showed as only a half-hour program.  That turned out to be incorrect, but I was initially wondering if cutting the length of the show had been part of a compromise to bring it back on the air.

When the episode began, the intro showed the eight celebrities to be profiled this season.  I noticed that it's a very different kind of group than we had seen on NBC.  During the last season on NBC, Thomas Macentee had been reporting that ratings were dropping with each episode, and I'm sure that was an extremely important factor in NBC's decision to drop the program.  But the new list of celebrities also makes me wonder whether they were starting to see a lack of compelling stories, and/or whether the celebrities with stories no longer fit NBC's demographic as well, which skews a little older.  Six of this season's celebrities are decidedly younger than what we've seen previously, and the oldest is only 48:  Christina Applegate (41), Kelly Clarkson (31), Cindy Crawford (47), Zooey Deschanel (33), Chelsea Handler (38), Chris O'Donnell (43), Jim Parsons (40), Trisha Yearwood (48).  So this is a pretty big shift.  I also noticed there is no black celebrity this season, which surprised me, and the only Jewish representative is Handler, who is half Jewish and half Mormon (now there's an interesting combination).

But on to Kelly Clarkson, our first celebrity for this year.  She was the winner of the first season of American Idol in 2002 and has carved out a successful singing career.  She has won three Grammys, has had multiple songs go platinum, and sang at President Barack Obama's second inauguration.  In her description of herself, she said that she was very strong and that she stood up for what she wanted, which she had to get from someone in the family, which set the theme for the rest of the show.  She repeated it so many times during the episode I wondered if it was the only line she had memorized.  Admittedly, she is a singer, not an actress, but I found her to be very "fakey" throughout the episode.  Most of her lines seemed very strained.

Clarkson is engaged and decided it would be nice to learn about her past.  For the past two years her mother has been working on the family's genealogy, so she wanted to talk to her about what she has found already.  Her mother, Jeanne Ann Taylor, lives in North Carolina, but came to visit Clarkson in Nashville.  Clarkson asked Taylor why she had become interested in genealogy; Taylor said it was because she had had no connection to her family roots and wanted to know what kind of people her ancestors had been.  She told Clarkson she had found some things online and (of course) said to look on Ancestry.com.  She pointed Clarkson to the Rose family tree she has created.  The oldest ancestor on the tree was Isaiah Rose (1842–1916), Clarkson's third-great-grandfather.  Taylor told Clarkson that's where she should start.

Even though Taylor had already created the tree, and one would hope she had done some research to come up with her information (okay, maybe hope in vain), the first thing Clarkson did was look for Rose in the 1870 census.  Of course she found him:  He was 28 years old, living in Coal Run, Washington County, Ohio, working as a "coal diger" [sic].  Also in the household were Malissa (20 years old) and Leslie (1 year old).  Amazingly enough, she immediately commented that he would have been about the right age to be in the Civil War and noted that being from Ohio he probably would have been a Yankee.  At first she didn't sound happy about that, but her tone changed a little later and she said it was a relief that he would have been fighting for the Union and freedom.  When she looked for Rose in military records, she found him listed with two units, the 18th Ohio and the 63rd Ohio, both times as a private.  (She ignored the Isaiah Rose from Tennessee who fought for the Confederacy.)  She wondered why he was listed with two different units.  She and her mother decided the best place for her to start her research was in Ohio.

In Columbus, Ohio, Clarkson went to the Ohio Historical Society and met with Vonnie Zullo, a researcher who specializes in military records at the National Archives and Library of Congress — in other words, in Washington, D.C.  The compiled military service record (CMSR) of Isaiah Rose that Zullo showed Clarkson is stored at Archives I in DC.  As often happens, the location shoot was nothing but window dressing.

Zullo showed Clarkson the first card in the file, which indicated Rose had enlisted in October 1861.  Even though this was six months after the first shots of the Civil War had been fired, somehow Clarkson decided it was "right after" the war started.  She also said she just "had to know" why he would have "enrolled" (her word, not mine).  Zullo explained that there was a lot of patriotic feeling in Ohio because it had a long history of abolitionism and was an important part of the Underground Railroad.  She said it was one of the top three states for volunteers.  When Clarkson asked why Rose was in two different regiments, Zullo said that after he was mustered out of his first unit there was still a need for soldiers, so he could have re-enlisted to continue supporting the cause.  Then Zullo showed Clarkson a card (with the name spelled as Isaih Rose) that stated Rose had been taken prisoner after the Battle of Decatur.  Clarkson of course wanted to know what had happened, so Zullo told her she should go to Decatur and find out.  It's amazing how Ancestry.com says that all you need to do is look on their Web site for all the information you need for your genealogy, but then they send people all over the world to find information that just doesn't happen to be on the site.

But Clarkson dutifully traveled to Decatur (just outside Atlanta), apparently by car, a trip of about eight and a half hours and almost 600 miles.  Maybe Clarkson doesn't like to fly?  At the DeKalb History Center she met with Timothy Orr of Old Dominion University.  Clarkson "caught him up" with what she knew about Rose (as if he didn't already know), and he explained how the Battle of Decatur was part of Sherman's Atlanta Campaign, which led to his March to the Sea.  He showed her a battlefield map indicating positions of Union and Confederate forces, to which Clarkson commented that the battle was "kind of" an important supply one.  Yeah (sigh).  So the Confederate cavalry came up behind the Unions lines and took several men prisoner.  The report of the battle indicated 31 men were missing, including Isaiah Rose.

Oh, but now relevent records were available on Ancestry again, so when Clarkson wanted to know what camp Rose was taken to as a prisoner, Orr said she should look online.  Clarkson went to Ancestry and said, "Let's see what comes up" (good heavens, who scripts this stuff?).  She found Rose listed in the Andersonville Prisoners of War database and that he was exchanged in Atlanta on September 19, 1864.  (Coincidentally, this same information is available for free on the National Park Service Web site, in the Civil War Soldiers and Sailors database.  Unlike the entry on Ancestry, the CWSS site includes that Rose survived Andersonville.)  Orr told her that Andersonville had held 45,000 prisoners, to which her response was, "Wow!" (Sigh again.)  Orr said, "I'll ... see what I can find" in the way of original documents and sent Clarkson to Andersonville to get a feeling for what her ancestor's experience would have been like.

At the Andersonville National Historic Site Clarkson was met at the gates by Park Ranger Chris Barr.  He told her that the camp structures were mostly gone and that the gates themselves had been reconstructed, so practically nothing was actually left of the prison Rose had been held in.  The original Andersonville was a fenced-in stockade with no housing; prisoners made their own tents for shelter.  The prison was constructed to hold 10,000 men, but became home to 45,000.  (This number, given by both Orr and Barr, is actually misleading.  Over the course of its use Andersonville housed a total of 45,000 men, but not all at once.  According to one site, the maximum number of men there at one time was about 33,000, which is horrific enough that the presenters did not need to misrepresent the total.)

A former Andersonville prisoner named Robert H. Kellogg wrote a description of his experience at the camp from May 1864.  Clarkson read aloud a page of his book.  (Kellogg's book, Life and Death in Rebel Prisons, is available as a free download at Google Books.)  Orr showed Clarkson a photograph of an Andersonville prisoner who was barely skin and bones.  He told her that a swamp was within the camp confines and that many prisoners caught diseases while there.  Almost 13,000 prisoners died at Andersonville, making it the deadliest place of the Civil War.  Clarkson wanted to know how the prisoners left at the end of the war.  Barr showed her a record with a list of prisoners who escaped, which included Isaiah Rose.  He explained Rose probably ran away while he was in transit to a different prison.  Clarkson asked what happened then, but Barr said he didn't know.  Clarkson drove away from Andersonville, talking about how her discoveries had made her feel.  I was stunned to see that she drove past Andersonville National Cemetery and didn't say a single word about it; there wasn't even a caption on screen to identify it.

From Andersonville Clarkson headed back to the Atlanta area.  She met again with Timothy Orr, this time at the National Archives at Atlanta (actually in Morrow).  He had found Isaiah Rose's invalid pension file.  During his escape from Andersonville he had been wounded by friendly fire.  Someone in the 33rd Indiana had mistaken him for a Rebel and shot him in the left leg.  He had a 3" scar and a permanent disability.  Clarkson gave a tearful soliloquy about how Rose's legacy was four million people freed and the union kept together.  She had performed at Obama's inauguration, but he wouldn't been president if not for the Union winning the war.  This was another time she said she had to have come from a long line of people who were willing to stand up for what they believed.  They were great sentiments, but she just didn't deliver them believably.

Now Clarkson wanted to know what Rose had done after the war, so she went to Marietta, Ohio (the Washington County seat), where she met with Josh Taylor (who seems to have put on a little weight; I guess all of his success is going straight to his hips) at the Washington County Public Library.  Clarkson wondered if Rose's disability had affected his life.  Taylor had a folder about Rose.  An article from August 31, 1886 showed he had been elected to the position of county sheriff.  An article from the Marietta Daily Leader of November 8, 1905 congratulated Rose on being elected a state senator as a Republican (which Taylor explained was Lincoln's party) and included a photograph.  Clarkson's reaction?  "Oh my gosh."  And then she went on (again) about "how far back that strength came from" in her family.  Taylor suggested Clarkson go to the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus to learn more about Rose's political career.

At the Ohio Statehouse Tom Pegram, a professor of history at Loyola University in Maryland, was waiting to meet Clarkson.  She explained he had "been doing research for me" (finally an honest comment!), but then asked if there was "any way to find out" more information.  (If there weren't, why would you be here?)  Anyway, Pegram said that newspapers had a lot of political commentary about Rose and his opinions on temperance.  (One of Pegrams's research focuses is the American temperance movement.)  Rose was firmly in favor of temperance and more regulation of saloons.  Clarkson called this a "hiccup in the ancestor department", her best comment during the episode.  When Pegram explained that the temperance movement also involved women's rights, because of the number of men who would come home drunk and beat their wives, Clarkson decided, "I'm glad he [Rose] was for women."  Rose backed a bill that would allow counties to regulate saloons more; the bill passed on February 27, 1908 and was signed by the governor.  Clarkson asked whether Rose, as a freshman senator (how in the world did she know that term?), had made enemies with his support of the temperance movement.  Pegram showed her an article from the Marion Weekly Star of November 11, 1908 which said that Rose had become a target of the liquor industry and had missed being re-elected by 32 votes.  To add insult to injury, the county bill was rescinded.

Lastly, Pegram showed Clarkson the book Washington County, Ohio to 1980, which had a section on the Isaiah Rose family.  It included a photo of the family and mentioned that Rose had died on Thanksgiving Day, November 26, 1916 and was buried in Round Bottom Cemetery.  Clarkson wanted to see where he was buried and said (again) this is "why I stand up for things, it's in my blood."  (Do her songs repeat a refrain this many times?)

At Round Bottom Cemetery, which is near Coal Run, Clarkson found the Rose family plot fairly easily.  She seemed genuinely excited to see all the names, including Isaiah's.  She talked to his stone and told him, "I'm your three times great-granddaughter."  (Now that's something I can empathize with.  When I visit cemeteries I always talk to the people I visit.  I remember going to the Jesuit cemetery in Santa Clara, California and having a nice half-hour discussion with Father John.)  As Clarkson left the cemetery she said, "I think everyone should do this.  Now it's back to Nashville to tell Mom what I've learned."

In Nashville there was a short wrap-up with Clarkson and her mother.  They talked about Rose being a pillar of strength and how they hadn't been connected with their families but now had learned about them.  And as a final chorus, Clarkson said, "It's in our blood."

I found this an underwhelming episode because of Clarkson's on-screen persona (even all of her hugs seemed scripted), but the research held together very well, which was great to see.  I was happy that Ancestry.com did not air its horrible "you don't need to know what you're looking for" commercial, but the new "simply type in the name" isn't that much of an improvement.

"Who Do You Think You Are?" - Helen Hunt

Well, my schedule has obviously gone haywire.  Here I am posting about Helen Hunt after Rita Wilson has aired.  But I'm working on catching up!  I knew even less about Helen Hunt before this episode of Who Do You Think You Are? than I had about Kim Cattrall (in fact, I get Helen Hunt and Linda Hunt's names confused).  The introduction was a short overview of her work, including the factoid that she is only the second woman to have won an Oscar, an Emmy, and a Golden Globe award in the same year.  She had heard about her mother's family, but didn't know very much about her father's side.  His mother had died young, when he was only 5.  Hunt wanted to find out about her father's European Jewish family for her daughter, so that she could know where she was from.

Hunt went to visit her father, Gordon Hunt, who showed her photos of his mother with his grandmother, Florence Roberts.  He knew that the family name had originally been Rothenberg but didn't know when it had been changed.  (My great-grandfather changed his name but our family also kept the memory of what the original name was.  Not everyone is so lucky.)  Gordon Hunt had never known his grandfather but knew that he immigrated from Germany to New York, that the family eventually moved to Pasadena, California, and that his grandmother used to live in the Green Hotel.  Hunt wondered where the money had come from that allowed her to live in a hotel.  She drove to Pasadena to start her research.

At the Hotel Green, Hunt met with Marc Dollinger, a professor of Jewish studies at California State University at San Francisco.  Hunt said that she had asked Dollinger to do the research.  This refreshing approach was maintained throughout the episode; Hunt did not pretend to have done any of the work herself.  She asked Dollinger how Helen Roberts could afford to live in a hotel.  Unrefreshingly, Dollinger said they should search in the 1900 census on Ancestry.com.  It was nice, however, to see him drill down specifically to the 1900 census database, as opposed to searching from the home page.  When you know what information you are looking for, it is far more effective to search in that specific database.

Florence Rothenberg was found with her husband Gustav, four children (including Gordon's mother, Helen, as a 1-year-old), and four servants.  They were living in New York City.  The servants obviously suggest that the family had money.  Though it was not shown on television, the census also indicates that Rothenberg owned his house free and clear.  In what is probably a coincidence, the last name of the family's next-door neighbors was Roberts.

Dollinger showed Hunt a copy of Gustav Rothenberg's death certificate.  He died December 15, 1900 in New York.  Dollinger then had Hunt search in the 1910 census for Florence.  That year she was living in Pasadena, California.  All four children were in the household, but there were no servants.  Dollinger said he didn't know why the family had moved to Pasadena but commented that between 1900-1950 the Jewish population in the Los Angeles area increaed 800%.

Dollinger next asked Hunt to search for Florence in Pasadena in the 1920 census (and mentioned Ancestry.com again).  He had to restrict the search to Pasadena because eleven other Florence Rothenbergs are in other locations; no result was found for Pasadena.  Then he had Hunt look for Florence Roberts, and there she was.  For some reason they showed the search page twice while looking for her under Roberts.  Florence still had two children at home and had a servant again.

There was some discussion of why Florence would have changed her name.  Dollinger talked about how Jewish refugees coming to the United States were fleeing starvation, persecution, and other ills and how quotas were established in 1921 to stem the number of immigrants.  He said that Jews already in the U.S. suddenly began to face discrimination as an indirect result of the quotas and that it might have been good not to have a Jewish-sounding name.  That's all well and good, but Florence had already changed her name by 1920, so his short history lesson doesn't explain her motives.  What occurred to me is that she might have changed it due to anti-German sentiment during World War I, as many other people did.

After all the talk about Hotel Green, it was surprising that they did not show Florence in the 1930 census, because at that point she was actually living in the hotel.  Instead the next document was Florence's death certificate (she died September 1, 1949), which showed her father as William Scholle.  They didn't talk about her mother, giving us a strong clue that her father's line was going to be pursued next.

We were then shown a copy of an 1845 ship manifest for travel from Bavaria to New York City with Wolf Scholy on it.  Dollinger mentioned that Wolf is a common German name and glossed over the different name by saying that William is a more "American" name.  I've heard that some people were confused by this quick treatment of the subject and didn't understand how Wolf and William could be the same person.

Many immigrants to the U.S. had names that were traditional and even common in their native countries but that stood out when they arrived here.  Most people wanted to assimilate, find work, and create new lives.  If your name was something like Joyne Gorodetsky it might be hard to get a job, but rename yourself Joe Gordon and you could fit in better.  While there were (and are) no "rules" on what to change your name to, it was very common to see someone keep the same first initial.  Changing Wolf to William was also very commonly seen.  As usual, we weren't shown all of the research, but it is quite reasonable to believe that links were found to connect Wolf Scholy to William Scholle.

On the 1845 manifest Wolf was listed as a farmer.  Dollinger explained that an economic depression was going on in Europe at that time and that many people were moving to cities and overseas.  By 1853 William appeared to be in a clothing business with his brother Abraham.  A New York City business directory listed the two men in the same business, Abraham at 174 Broadway and William in San Francisco, California.  Dollinger elaborated that 1848-1850 was a fortuitous time because of the discovery of gold in California.  William had come out during the Gold Rush and found that his language and business skills were useful and profitable.

Hunt said she didn't know anything about the Gold Rush (she's almost 49 years old; didn't they teach that in schools back then?!).  She decided to drive to San Francisco to learn more.  They showed her heading out and driving a vehicle, but when they showed her going over the Bay Bridge she was a passenger, which was an odd non sequitur.  At the San Francisco Public Library (I think they were in the San Francisco History Center on the sixth floor) she met with Stephen Aron, a professor history of the American West at UCLA.  (Was anyone else amused by the fact that the San Francisco professor was filmed in Los Angeles, while the Los Angeles professor was in San Francisco?)  She told Aron flat out, "I know nothing about the Gold Rush."  Aron had found William "Schele" in the 1852 California census (which they had to show on paper, because Ancestry doesn't have the entire census available yet).  He talked about how the population in San Francisco had exploded after the discovery of gold and that merchants and businesses that supplied clothing and other items to the miners were the ones really making money.  He also mentioned that crime was rampant in San Francisco but didn't tie the comment to anything else.

Next we saw a clipping from an 1855 newspaper (which I didn't see the name of) with the title "Shipment of Treasures."  It listed the Scholle Bros. with a large amount that Aron said would be equivalent to about a quarter of a million dollars today.  Obviously the Scholle Brothers were doing well in business.  (I couldn't find the exact article used on the program, but the one to the left, from the Sacramento Daily Union of February 7, 1856, is similar.  I found it on the California Digital Newspaper Collection site, which I'm sure is where the program's researchers found it also.  It is not available on Ancestry.)  Aron then produced an 1858 city directory page showing Jacob and William Scholle as manufacturers and importers, with an address of 4 Custom House in Sacramento.

The next document was the 1870 census with William and Rosa Scholle.  Their daughter Florence was there, as were three "domestic servants."  Aron showed photos of William, Rosa, and Florence with an unnamed sister but did not say where the photos were from.  The last item he showed Hunt was an original San Francisco newspaper from November 28, 1874 with an article about "Solid Men" who were worth more than $1 million.  Among the men were Jacob and William Scholle.  In the 20+ years since they had immigrated to the U.S. they had gone from farmers to millionaires.

Hunt went from the library to the old San Francisco Mint to speak with Frances Dinkelspiel, author of the book Towers of Gold (the full title is Towers of Gold:  How One Jewish Immigrant Named Isaias Hellman Created California, which shows more than a little bias on the part of Dinkelspiel and doesn't give enough credit to the people who worked with him).  Dinkelspiel showed Hunt a New York Times article about when the Nevada Bank was to be sold.  It mentioned Levi Strauss, the Scholle brothers, and Isaias Hellman as investors.  Dinkelspiel revealed that Hellman was her great-great-grandfather, as Scholle was Hunt's great-great-grandfather, so the two women share a connection that dates back four generations.  Dinkelspiel showed a second Times article which discussed the merger of Wells Fargo and Nevada Bank, a transaction engineered by Hellman.  Investors included the Lehman brothers and again the Scholles.  These men and other Bavarian Jewish immigrants came to the United States, established themselves strongly in business, and prospered.  They truly were living the American dream.

That segment ended the research into Hunt's Jewish ancestry.  From San Francisco she traveled to Portland, Maine to learn about her great-great-grandfather George Hunt I, a businessman who traded in goods.  Hunt said she had asked Herb Adams, a local historian (and former Maine state representative), to do the research for her.  He found that George had imported sugar from the Caribbean and exported wood.  He incorporated his company in 1863.  Adams also found George's obituary, which stated that he left a widow and two sons.  The emphasis of the research results then quickly shifted from George to his widow, Augusta Barstow Hunt.

Augusta was an educated woman who was extremely active in the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU).  (I learned that the temperance movement started in Portland.)  Adams explained that sugar was used to make rum and booze in general, but that George's business probably did not process sugar for making liquor.  He also talked about the Maine liquor law of 1851, which prohibited the manufacture and sale of liquor.  Hunt was a little uncomfortable with the antialcohol discussion and joked that it "makes me want to go have something warm with rum in it."  (Yum!)

Hunt went to the Neal Dow House (Neal Dow sponsored the 1851 liquor law), now the home of the Maine chapter of the WCTU, where she met with Carol Mattingly, listed as a temperance historian on screen but as an English professor at the University of Louisville Web site.  She talked about how the temperance movement was a reaction to rampant alcohol abuse.  Women rallied to the cause because of abuse.  Married women had few legal rights and little recourse, so they banded together for social change.  At the eleventh annual WCTU convention Augusta gave the opening address.  Mattingly showed Hunt a cabinet card photo of Augusta, along with photos of her children.  Hunt recalled that her grandmother had been killed by a drunk driver.  This was alluded to in the beginning of the episode and I admit that I missed the hint it gave of what was to come.  Hunt conceded that she had had a negative reaction to the topic of temperance but that it was an important social issue.  She wondered how long Augusta had lived and whether she would be able to find out about her death.

The final research segment took Hunt to the Maine Historical Society, where she spoke with Shannon M. Risk, an associate professor of history at Niagara University.  Again Hunt did not pretend to be doing the research but said "she would do research for me."  Risk had found a short biography of Augusta which stated that she was president of the WCTU chapter for fifteen years.  The WCTU had brought about daycare, kindergartens, women on school boards, and social activism.

The women's rights movement grew out of the temperance movement.  In 1917 Augusta and other women gathered signatures for a proposal for women's voting rights in Maine.  The proposal was voted down two to one.  Augusta did live long enough to see the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote throughout the country, pass in 1920.  Risk produced a 1920 voter register and suggested Hunt look through it for Augusta.  Then they tried to build some drama -- Hunt said, "I hope she's in here," and "I don't see her."  (Like with this lead-in there was any way she wasn't there?)  Risk told her which district to check, and Hunt finally found Augusta M. Hunt at 165 State Street.  Then Hunt wondered, "She registered, but did she actually cast a ballot?"  That meant we knew it was coming.  Risk showed Hunt a newspaper article published on the occasion of Augusta's 90th birthday.  It mentioned that hers was the first woman's ballot to be passed.  Augusta died ten days after the article was published.

Hunt went to the grave of George and Augusta and made a rubbing of the tombstone for her daughter.  There was no wrap with family members, which was surprising, but she became very emotional as she discussed the revelations that had been made in the episode.  I found it interesting that both sides of her family created considerable fortunes.

And I am still good on my predictions!  I said that Hunt's episode might deal with her Jewish grandmother, and it also tied her family to important times in American history, the temperance movement and women's voting rights.  What does that make me, six for six?