Great-great-great Grandma Mary Something-Henry

There is some confusion about my great-great-great grandmother, Mary Henry's, maiden name. Mary died on the 8th of January in 1907. Her son August Henry was listed at the informant on her death certificate. Noted on the certificate is that August could not ascertain his mother’s maiden name.

On April 16, 1906 August Henry married Mary Arsenault at St. Elizabeth's Church in Woodhaven, Queens, New York. On his marriage certificate his mother's maiden name is listed as Carrion; as opposed to Carrian which is listed on her death certificate above. I am not hung up on the spelling of the name. Every genealogist knows that the concept of correct spelling is  a 20th century notion. I just wonder if August was correct about this mother's maiden name at the time of his marriage.

August's best-man was a gentleman by the name of Harry Carillion. Could Carrillion been his mother's maiden name? It does soundex the same as Carrion and Carrian. Could Harry have been a cousin on his mother's side?

According to all the census records I have found listing my Mary Henry, she was born in the U.S., in New York in October of 1855 to parents of French origin; not Swiss. On her death certificate above it says her parents were Swiss but we know August was unclear about other facts at the time of her death; did he make a mistake there too? Mary's husband, Victor Henry, was of Swiss descent. Were Mary's parents French speaking Swiss?

I did attempt to find a Mary Carrion/Carrian in the 1870 census; before she was married. I did find a possible match; a Mary Carrion, line 36 below, aged 13 years old which would have put her birth in about 1857. That could be, however, her parents are listed as being born in Ireland. Eh, this is probably not my Mary since she lists her parents as being born in France in later census records. Interestingly enough though, this Mary's older brother works in a tin factory and my great-great-great grandmother Mary's husband, Victor Henry, was a tinsmith. Hmm...

For now Mary's maiden name will remain a mystery but it saddens me that our mother's lines are often lost to the patriarchal conformity of our culture. When women marry they traditionally give up their maiden names; granted those names are taken from their father's but still that tradition can make maternal research extremely challenging. And so researching Mary Something-Henry's family line has hit the brick wall. Don't worry though, Mary, I won't give up.

Inheriting Estrangement

Several years ago I became enamored with a documentary called Traces of the Trade and a book titled Inheriting the Trade both of which were about the descendents of the largest slave trading family in the United States; the DeWolf Family of Bristol, Rhode Island. Both really examine what history we inherit as individuals, as citizens, as a society.

I remember the first time I read a family will in which among the bedding and silverware were the names of people. I was 16 at the time and devastated, absolutely devastated that my family, family here in the great state of New York, owned slaves and treated humans as property. Devastated.

The DeWolf's story began to make me ponder what other intangible things we inherit; what other qualities are passed down through our families. For me I have discovered a history of estrangement. It's really a rather painful issue for me. For those of you who do not know what I am talking about, estrangement is the breakdown of a once harmonious relationship into one that is characterized as, at worst, hostile but at the very least, indifferent. To say one is estranged from someone else is to say they no longer have a functioning family relationship. It is usually a devastating process. I am estranged from my mother.

It wasn't until the passing of my maternal grandfather in 2004 that I began to research my mother's genealogy. Grandpa wasn't keen on talking about family and I never knew my maternal grandmother, she died before I was born. I consciously chose to wait to investigate mom's side. I didn't outright state I would wait until grandpa died; I never wanted to think of that day but I did always sort of think, "well, I'll wait." After grandpa passed away though, my interest in mom's line began to gnaw at me.

I came to learn that my grandfather was estranged from his older sister, Lois. That my grandmother's father, James Fay, along with his other siblings, shunned a sister for marrying a man of Chinese descent. My grandfather's paternal grandfather, Damase Desjardins, had a son from a first marriage that he left with family in Montreal when he moved to the U.S. I don't know what their relationship was like but considering Damase did not attend his son's wedding I suspect they were estranged.

All these relationships clarified for me that my family has passed down an acceptance of such behavior. We've learned that it is okay to lob off the limb of the family tree that, for whatever reason, we just can't get along with.

Well, I don't think that it is okay.

It is rapidly approaching the 1st anniversary of my Aunt Nancy's death. She was the one of my mother's siblings that really did obviously try to keep family together. Her passing was a dramatic event on many many levels. The day she passed I had an epiphany; a striking revelation that I will never lose...

The lesson of family is to learn to accept one another as they are.

You don't have to love them. You don't even have to like them. What you need to do is learn to accept them as they are with some sort of respect. They don't have to live in your house. You don't have to go out of your way to see them. But what you really really shouldn't do is turn your back on them. You might really be all they have; the only person they have any sort of connection to; a connection that was assigned to you.

As the holidays approach, while you're rolling your eyes at the repetition of some family story at some family function you might not really want to be at, remember that this is what you have inherited. Pass on something greater. Teach acceptance. Teach tolerance. Love.

Well-connected and Psychic Friends

I have a friend who's sister is a medium. Regardless of how you feel about psychics, this woman is no joke. I had never had a reading before until I sat with Mary. She said the most amazing things to me; things no one could have possibly know. And I am sure everyone who goes to a psychic and is taken by what they say says just that, "She told me things no one else could possibly know." But could they tell you the story I am about to share with you?

Several things really stand out to me from that reading but most memorable was Mary saying to me that it was wonderful to read someone who knew their family history. It made it easy for me to understand who she was connecting with. Without getting into all the details she shared with me, towards the end of the session Mary said to me, "You're going to come across two family names in your research; Williams and Evans." It didn't strike me as remarkable at the time; I mean, they aren't that uncommon of names. In fact, I completely dismissed the Williams name because my Cousin Kelly has recently married into a Williams family. I took what Mary said with a grain of salt and filed it away.

She asked me, "Who is David?" I shrugged. I didn't really know a David. I had worked with a few. My father's cousin had a son named David, but I don't really know him well. Nope, I didn't know any David really well.

Not more than 3 days later I was going through some family papers, papers I had looked at a hundred times if I had looked at them once, and there on my great grandmother, Mayme Sharp's boarder crossing card from Canada into the United States I noticed a name. Mayme listed that she was headed to Lowell, Massachusetts to see her Aunt Belle EVANS. EVANS. And Mary's words floated back to me.

Who was this Evans woman? I don't recall finding an Aunt Belle in the research I had done. Now I was on a mission. A mission that would take me a very long time and depend upon the kindness of well-connected friends.

I began searching census records for Aunt Belle. I came upon a Belle N. Evans married to a Fred Evans in Lowell, Massachusetts. Since the time of my reading I had befriended a genealogist in Massachusetts; whose name was...wait for it...wait for it....David. It never really struck me that now I knew a David. Sincerely, I had almost forgotten that Mary had asked me about a David.

I called upon his expertise to helped me locate a marriage certificate for this couple even though I was not 100% sure that this Aunt Belle was really my great-grandmother's aunt; she could have been a friend of the family as is often the case with that side of my family. There are many instances when very close family friends are called Aunt and Uncle despite the fact they are not related; it can and often is just a term of respect. Sometimes Aunt and Uncle are titles given to near relatives too. For example, I call my father's first cousins Aunt Ro, Uncle Charlie, Uncle Ed, etc. So was this Aunt Belle really an aunt to my great grandmother?

David helped me to secure this document:

If you look at the details about Isabelle you'll see her last name is listed as no-other-than Williams. What?!?! Yes, Williams, the surname of her first husband. And in parentheses after the Williams you will see the name McLean. 

Great-grandma Mayme Sharp-Gardner's mother's name was Lydia McLean-Sharp. My great-great grandmother's parents were Donald McLean and Elizabeth Walker-McLean; this I knew! Without a doubt I also now knew that Isabelle Nancy McLean-Williams-Evans was the sister of Lydia McLean-Sharp. Aunt Belle was absolutely the biological aunt of my great grandmother Mayme Sharp-Gardner.


And there it was; Williams and Evans. Staring me square in the face were the names I was told I would research. A document I probably would not have seen if not for the help of David. Mary is no joke.

And Aunt Belle played a pretty critical piece in my family's history. She was the person who facilitated my great-grandmother's move from Canada to the United States. Several generations before this line had lived in New Hampshire but moved up to Canada for land. Here they were moving back to the U.S. in the 1910s for work. Had great-grandma Mayme stayed in Canada someone else would be writing this blog. I'm grateful to Aunt Belle.
 
As I always tell my researching cousins and friends when their hit their genealogical brick walls; some ancestors just do not want to be found but some, oh some relatives most definitely want to be found, definitely.

The Power of the Sea

It has been a long time since I have written. My only excuse is that I have been overwhelmed with the end of the semester. As a post-graduate student I am only taking one class, but still it was a rough semester battered mostly by Hurricane Sandy which caused havoc in my homeland of Long Island, NY. 

My family, in general, fared well. We all lost power at some point. My Uncle Thomas was the hardest hit being that he lived on a canal. My sister was also displaced for sometime. She gave birth to my niece, her first child, just days before the storm and returned home to a house filled with 5 feet of water. My niece, Sofie, spent the first two weeks of her life living in my childhood bedroom with my sister, my brother-in-law, and their dog. Needless to say it all seemed normal to Sofie.

But all this talk of storms and the ravages of the sea has made me think of my great-great grandfather, Abraham Earle who died at sea. The Earles were a seafaring people who lived in Twillingate, Newfoundland until my great-grandfather Abram Thomas Earle emigrated to the United States at the turn of the century with his sisters; he was about 8 at the time and his mother had died. 

Abram never knew his father. He was born after his father's death. Often when I say that people seem confused. Yes, that can happen. His father died while his mother was pregnant. His father, Abraham took to sea on a ship called The Rise and Go in the fall of 1890. Abram was born in January 1891 and on March 21, 1891 this article appeared in the Twillingate Sun.

"When on the wide and boundless path Of desolation doom'd to flee, Say, sunk she mid the blended wrath Of stormy cloud or raging sea? Or where the laud but mocks the eye, Went drifting on a fatal shore? Vain guess all ---- her Destiny was dark ---- She ne'er was heard of more, Oh! were her tale of sorrow known, 'Twere something to the aching heart; The pangs of doubt would then be gone, And fancy's dreams would then depart. It may not be ---- there is no ray By which her face we can explore, We only know ---- she sailed away, And ne'er was seen or heard of more."

"The beautiful lines of the poetess bear a most faithful and painful resemblance to the fate of one of our fleet of schooner, the Rise and Go, of Twillingate, Thomas WARR, master, which left this harbor late last fall with a cargo of fish from W. Waterman & Co., and bound for St. John's, and has not been heard of. Doubtless, she succombed to the fury of the gale which sprung up a few days after leaving this harbor, but no positive or definite account of how, or where, or when she was lost or disappeared, has ever reached the anxious and sorrowing relatives of those on board, and all hope that any such news will ever reach them must now be abandoned.

"In the meantime we would offer to the afflicted mourners our deepest and heartfelt sympathy in this their day of sorrow and suffering, and we feel certain that a like wide spread sympathetic feeling exists in the hearts of the general community, where the lost ones were well known and esteemed. It might not be a difficult, but it would be a very melancholy and painful task for the imagination to picture the anxious waiting, the harrowing suspense, with the fitful gleams of hope that must at times have agitated the hearts of those despairing mourners, looking --- oh how vainly looking for the return of the missing and beloved ones to the homes now, so desolate and deserted; but we confess our inability to enter on such a painful task, or to dwell on the irreparable loss they have sustained. The missing ones are now we trust in "That land of pure delight, Where Saints immortal reign." And we know that all will reverently join us in commending the bereaved families to the guidance of One who has promised (and his promises are Yea and Amen) to be a husband to the widow, a father to the fatherless, a friend to the friendless, and a very sure refuge in every time of need.

"The six men composing the crew of the ill fated Rise and Go were the master, Thomas WARR, and two sons George and Daniel, Abraham EARLE, Elijah SHARPE, and Thomas SIMMS, who have left four widows and fifteen children."

Note: The dates on this headstone are wrong. Erected by his children long after his death, Abraham Earle died at sea in the fall of 1890. His body is not interned here.

The sea is a powerful and mighty force. It has affected lives then and now and will continue to do so for as long as humankind exists. Nature always wins.

FOLLOW-UP: February 17, 1950: Rockville Centre Train Derailment

I searched the New York Times Historical database today to see what more I could learn about the Rockville Centre train derailment that took place in February of 1950.

I found this article that not only listed each of the casualties and all those injured but showed the exact location of the accident.

I wish I could make it larger so it was easier for you to read:

February 17, 1950: Rockville Centre Train Derailment

The other morning I woke to find my father had left me a stack of old family photos bundled together by a rubberband. Really dad, really?? A rubberband?

Anyway, among the photos were these 7 pictures. I can not identify anyone in them or where exactly it was photographed or by whom BUT, there is a date written on the back; "Feb. 1950."

 So I googled "Long Island train derailment February 1950" and found this entry in wikipedia

February 17, 1950 – Rockville Centre, New York, United States: Two passenger trains collide head-on at Rockville Centre train station. The engineer of train number 192 ignored an Approach and the following Stop signals and collided with train number 175 on temporary gantleted (overlapping) track which had been installed to facilitate a grade separation project. Both engineers survived but 31 people were killed, and more than 100 people injured.^[1]

<sup>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rail_accidents_%281950%E2%80%931959%29 

My father would have only been 2 1/2 months old at the time of this accident. My grandfather was a machine operator. I suspect he may have been the one to take these pictures and perhaps he worked on the crash site. I don't know for sure but I am now on the hunt to understand how we came to hold on to these pictures for so long.</sup>

Salvaging Family Photos

Part of the reason I have not been posting to my blog is because I live on Long Island, NY. On October 28, Hurricane Sandy hit my beloved island hard. I was not here at the time of the storm as I was delivering a paper at a conference in Baltimore; a much safer, saner place for me to be.

Prior to my departure for the conference my sister gave birth to my parents' first grandchild; a girl, Sofia. She is beautiful and she is living her first few days with us here rather than in my sister's house because of the storm. Sandy unleashed 58 inches of water into their basement. It would be unsound to bring their newborn home until issues of power, heat, and mold have been resolved. And so Sofie sleeps without a care in the room her mother grew up in surrounded by her parents, grandparent, pet bulldog, Aunt April, and friends; oblivious that this is not normal.

I have been lending a hand to a dear friend who was affected by the storm as well. He fared pretty well all considered; however, he did lose his car and some cherished family photos. That is where I come in. I am trying to save whatever pictures I can for him. We haven't really had a fight about it, although we have had some cross stares with furrowed brows. He says that this is just stuff that he lived these images he doesn't need to save them; but I am certain he says this out of frustration and being overwhelmed. I keep saying that you have to save them or else how will they know. How will Who Know What? How will your children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, ect. know of the love that brought them here, how will they know who you were if they have no objects, no tokens, no documentation of the lives that existed that brought you here.

I am not talking about saving snapshots of nothing. I am talking about saving photos from the 1800s, baby pictures, first Christmases, wedding photos, photos of souls long gone, moments of love... We know not the degree to which that love existed but for the people in the photos it was a moment they wanted to capture in their own time and somehow it remains. I have to try to save them.

In any case, if your photos have been water damaged, they can often be salvaged. Photos are made in water. If need be you can soak them apart. The best course of action is to remove loose dirt and debris by rinsing your photos in a basin of cold clear running water until the water runs clean. Do not run water directly on them as this may cause further damage to the already softened emulsions. Lay them flat to dry. Do not cover them at this point. Let them fully dry. If they curl up simply take them once they are fully dry and press them in your heaviest books. Here are some more in depth tips from Image Permanence Institute: https://www.imagepermanenceinstitute.org/webfm_send/314 

As I have said, my house and family photos remained unharmed through this severe storm; thank God! This morning I woke to a bundle of old photo my father left on the kitchen counter for me before heading off to his job at the Long Island Power Authority. Among them was this photo; my Grandpa Edwin M. Earle Sr., his maternal Uncle Luman Losee, and grandpa's brother Allen Preston Earle circa 1945. 

Grandpa was a Navy man. Until this morning I had never seen this photo. I had never seen him so young. And only now I recall images of him with thick dark hair; like Sofie's. Since the moment I saw Sofie I have said that my Grandpa Earle (a.k.a. Poppy) would have loved those cheeks of hers. How will she know anything of him if I do not save this photo for her and fill her ears with stories of him and his ultra-sensitive crabby ways. How will they know?